Jf>fW 



63d Congress \ 
2d Session I 



SENATE 



f Document 
\ No. 360 



DIRECT LEGISLATION 



JF 488 
.P3 
Copy 1 



ARTICLE 

RELATIVE TO POPULAR 

GOVERNMENT THROUGH INITIATIVE, 

REFERENDUM, AND RECALL 

By 

PROF. FRANK E. PARSONS 

REVISED AND EDITED, 1912, BY 

MILTON T U'REN 

OF THE SAN FRANCISCO BAR; 

SECRETARY OF THE DIRECT 

LEGISLATION LEAGUE OF 

CALIFORNIA 



% 



PRESENTED BY MR. OWEN 
JANUARY 13, 1914.— Ordered to be printed 



WASHINGTON 
1914 



Pa 




d; of d, 

fEB 2C» 1914 



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DIRECT LEGISLATION. 



CHAPTER I. 



In early days the legislative function was exercised by the whole 
body of enfranchised citizens assembled for the purpose. The laws 
of the Commonwealth were made by the voters directly, in substan- 
tially the same way that the laws of a New England town are made 
to-day. But after a time the body of freemen became too large to 
meet in this way and a system of lawmaking by delegates was 
adopted. Towns and districts elected men to represent them in 
legislative council, and government by representatives took the place 
of government by the people except in respect to the local affairs of 
towns that possess the town-meeting system. 

The change from legislation by the people to legislation by final 
vote of a body of representatives chosen for a specified term was a 
transformation fraught with the most momentous consequences. 
Under the former system the people had complete control of legis- 
lation. No laws were passed that the people did not want and all 
laws were passed that the people did want. But under the delegate 
or representative-final- vote system this is not true. The representa- 
tives can and do make and put in force many laws the people do not 
desire and they neglect or refuse to make some laws the people do 
desire. The people can not command or veto their action during 
their term of office. The representatives are the real masters of the 
situation for the time being. \ Between elections the sovereign power 
of controlling legislation is not in the hands of the people, but in the 
hands of a small body of men called representatives.' It appears, 
therefore, that the change from legislation by the voters in person to 
legislation by delegates was a change from a real democracy to an 
elective aristocracy, from a continuous and effective popular sover- 
eignty to an intermittent, spasmodic, and largely ineffective popular 
sovereignty; from a government of the people, by the people, and 
for the people to a government of the people, by a few for — the 
people? Yes, sometimes, but too often for the legislators, and the 
lobbies, bosses, rings, monopolies, and party leaders who control 
them. It was a change in which self-government was fettered and 
the soul of liberty was lost. 

What, then, shall be done ? Shall we give up the representative 
principle? Clearly not. Division of labor and expert service are as 
essential in lawmaking as in any other business. It is not repre- 
sentation, but misrepresentation that is wrong — not the representa- 
tive system per se, but the unguarded and imperfect form of it in 
use at present. What we want is not a body of legislators beyond 
the reach of the people for one, two, four, or six years, as the case may 
be, but a body of legislators subject at all times to the people's direc- 
tion and control. It is good to have powerful horses to draw your 

S 



4 DIRECT LEGISLATION. 

load, but it is well to have bit and rein and whip if they are frisky or 
likely to shy or balk. It is good to choose strong men to manage 
municipal and State affairs, but it is well too to provide the means to 
hold them in check or make them move at the people's will. 

The problem is to keep the advantages of the representative 
system — its compactness, legal wisdom, experience, power of work, 
etc., and eliminate its evils, haste, complexity, corruption, error, over 
legislation and under legislation — departure from the people's will 
by omission or commission. 

The solution lies in a representative system guarded by constitu- 
tional provisions for popular initiative, adoption, veto, and recall. 
Elect your councilmen and legislators and let them pass laws exactly 
as they do now, except that no act but such as may be necessary 
for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health, or safety 
shall go into effect until 30 days after its passage in case of a city 
ordinance or 90 days in case of a State law. If within the said time 
a certain percentage of the voters of a city or State (say 5 or 10 per 
cent) sign a petition asking that the law or ordinance be submitted 
to the people at the polls, let it be so submitted at the next regular 
election, or at a special election if 15 or 20 per cent of the voters so 

Eetition. If the majority of those voting on the measure favor it, it 
ecomes a law; if the majority are against it, it is vetoed by the 
people. 

Let it be further provided that if the council or legislature neglect 
or refuse to take any such action by ordinance, law, contract, franchise, 
etc., as the people desire, the matter may be brought forward for 
prompt decision by a petition signed by a reasonable percentage 
(say, 5 or 10 per cent) of the voters of the city or State. \The petition 
may simply state the general purpose and scope of the desired measure, 
leaving the council or legislature to frame a bill to be submitted to the 
voters; or it may embody a bill or ordinance, whereupon the petition, 
with the bill or ordinance, will go to the council or legislature, which 
may adopt it, reject it, pass an amendment or substitute, or do 
nothing — in any case the proposed measure (together with the action 
of the council or legislature upon it, if any) will go to the polls for 
final decision at the next election, or earlier, if a sufficient number 
(say 15 or 20 per cent) of the voters so petition. Or the petition 
may require that the proposed law be placed directly before the 
people, without reference to the legislative body, for their adoption 
or rejection. 

These methods of law making by the people are called direct legis- 
lation, which includes two main processes known as the initiative 
and the referendum. 

The referendum may be obligatory or optional, general or partial, 
executive, legislative, judicial, or petitionai. Under the general 
obligatory referendum all laws except emergency measures (acts 
necessary for the immediate preservation of the public health, peace, 
or safety) must be submitted to the people; no petition is needed; 
the submission is as much a part of the process of law making as the 
submission to the mayor or governor. The cantons of Berne and 
Zurich, in Switzerland, have had this system in operation for 30 years 
with admirable results. Under the partial obligatory referendum 
all laws of a certain class must be submitted to the people. For 
example, constitutional amendments must be submitted to the 



DIRECT LEGISLATION. 

voters in every one of our States except Delaware, an<(\in Missouri, 
California, Washington, Minnesota, and Louisiana freehold charters 
must go to the polls. The purchase or erection of waterworks, gas 
and electric, plants, telephones and street railways, the issue of bonds 
for roads, schools, and other municipal movements of large impor- 
tance are usually guarded by the obligatory referendum 

The optional referendum provides for a vote of the people on any 
measure in reference to which such vote is demanded by petition of a 
reasonable percentage of the voters, or by some officer or body in 
whom such discretion is vested. 

The executive referendum is where the mayor or governor or Presi- 
dent has a right to refer a measure to the voters for decision. 

The legislative referendum is where one house, or a given percent- \ 
age (say 25 per cent) of one or of both houses may refer a measure 
to the people for decision, or where a measure upon which the houses 
disagree must be referred to the voters. 

The judicial referendum is where a law that lias been declared 
unconstitutional must be submitted to the people for the final 
decision under a fixed rule to that effect, or may be so submitted by 
the court, or by a specified number of the judges. 1 

The petional referendum is where the submission is called for by 
petition of the voters. A petition signed by the required number 
of voters is imperative, not a mere request, but a compelling mandate. 
It is the pctitional form of the optional referendum, or the system 
in which the option lies with the people, that is usually meant when 
the word "referendum" is used without explanation. 

It will be seen that executive, legislative, or judicial referenda may 
be either obligatory or optional, general or special, and that the 
petitional method can be used to repeal an old law or veto a new one, 
or confirm a law declared unconstitutional, or call for an election 
to remove a legislative or executive officer or a judge from office. 

The effective vote at the polls may be fixed at a majority of those 
voting, or of those entitled to vote, or a three-fifths, two-thirds, or 
three-fourths vote may be required. 

The word " referendum" is often used in the sense of the right of the 
people to have enactments submitted to them, and it is also used to 
designate a statute or constitutional amendment securing this right. 
The word "initiative" is used in a similar manner. The context will 
usually show which sense is intended. 

The initiative is the proposal of a law by the people. 

The referendum is the submission of a law to the people at the polls 
for approval or rejection. 

By these means the people can start or stop legislation at will. 
By initiative petition they can bring a measure forward for discus- 
sion and decision. They can rep3al an old law or amend it, or enact 
a new one, and progress is no longer barred by the interests or inertia 
of the legislators or councilmen, nor by the weight and wealth of 
corporate monopoly. Moreover, the people can prevent bad legisla- 
tion as well as secure good legislation. If the legislature passes a law 
the people dislike they can call for a referendum and veto the measure 
at the polls before it goes into effect, whereas at present the law goes 

1 The judicial referendum or "recall of decisions" bas been advocated by ex-I resident Roose'v elt. S>>a 
his Carnegie Hall Speech, New York City, Mar. 20, 1912, S. Do-. No. 473, 62d Con;,'. 



6 DIRECT LEGISLATION. 

into effect whether the people like it or not, and they have_ to wait 
till they can elect a new legislature to repeal the obnoxious act 
(after the damage is largely done, perhaps), and if the said act is a 
franchise, very likely it can not be revoked at all when once allowed 
to take effect — a franchise grant to a private company being a con- 
tract within the protection of the Federal Constitution, as established 
by the United States Supreme Court in the famous Dartmouth 
College case. This fact makes it particularly necessary that franchise 
grants (especially if unqualified by a reservation of the right to revoke 
at will) should be submitted to the people. 

Does not the direct-legislation amendment to the representative 
system solve the problem? Does not the guarded representative 
system retain the benefits and eliminate the evils of the unguarded 
representative system ? The city or State will have its body of legal 
experts, trained advisors, and experienced legislators as at present. 
They will continue to do most of the law making as they do now, 
but their power to do wrong or stop progress, their power to do as 
they please in spite of the people, will be gone. The city and State 
will have the service of its legislators without being subject to their 
mastery. If the delegates act as the people wish, their action will 
not be disturbed. If they act against the people's wish, the people 
will have a prompt and effective veto by which they can stop a 
departure from their will before any damage is done. _ If the delegates 
do not act, the people can put the machinery in motion and bring the 
matter to decision. When the delegates truly represent the people 
their action will stand; when they fail to represent the people their 
decision will be subject to prompt revision. Under the unguarded 
representative system their acts that do not represent the people's 
will stand as firm during their term of office as the acts that do repre- 
sent the popular will. Is this right? Is it right that the people's 
delegates should be able to impose their will upon the people for one, 
two, four, or six years ? Is it right that the acts of political agents, 
contrary to the people's will, should stand in spite of the people ? 
Is such a delegate system really worthy to be called a "representative 
system?" Is a system properly termed representative which may 
misrepresent as much as or more than it represents, and in which there 
is no adequate means of determining whether its action is representa- 
tive or not ? Is not the right to a referendum, the right of the people 
to prevent the delegates from misrepresenting them, absolutely 
necessary to entitle the delegate system to the name "representative V 

SELF-GOVERNMENT. 

There is a confused impression in the minds of many that the choos- 
ing of rulers is the substance of freedom and self-government; that a 
people who elect their lawmakers are really making the laws. But 
it is not so. The selection of a governor is not governing, any more 
than the selection of a captain is commanding, or the choice of an 
organist or pianist is playing. The choice of a legislature is not self- 
government any more than the selection of a jailer or the choice of a 
jail is freedom. 

An apprentice may be allowed to choose the master to whom he is 
to be bound for years, and a lunatic or minor who is deemed incapable 
of governing his own affairs may, nevertheless, have the privilege of 



DIRECT LEGISLATION. 7 

selecting the guardian who is to govern him. A people may elect 
their rulers and yet live under an absolute despotism. This was true 
in old Rome when the king was elected by the whole body of citizens. 
It is true now of the Western Fulahs in Africa and the Kamtscadales 
in Asia, who elect their chiefs, but after election must obey the head- 
man's orders. It is true in many of the cities of America, where the 
people go to the polls year after year in the fond delusion that they 
nave a voice in the administration of public affairs, whereas, in reality, 
a ring of rascals holds the city in its grasp, and whichever nominee 
the citizens may vote for the ring will rule the same as before, enact- 
ing its private purposes into law, pouring the public moneys into its 
purse, filling appointments with its creatures to perpetuate its power, 
and controlling the city for its plunder, regardless of the interests or 
the wishes of the people. It is true in the Nation and the States as 
well as in the cities. The rule of a congress or legislature that does 
the will of a railroad or syndicate of gamblers in opposition to public 
opinion and the good of the Commonwealth is a despotism as truly 
as ever the rule of a Tarquin or a Caesar was. Napoleon himself, 
the archdespot of modern times, was elected to his imperial power. 

The duration of a government or lease of power has nothing to do 
with its character as free or despotic. A control that lasts but a 
single year may be as far from freedom as one that endures for a life- 
time; and a people electing their rulers each year to govern accord- 
ing to their own sweet will may be no better off than a nation which 
elects a sovereign to wear the crown for life. The essence of despot- 
ism is the control of others for the benefit of the controller, regardless 
of the welfare of the controlled. The Tweed administration was a 
despotism, although elected to power. So was the gas legislation of 
the Philadelphia councils leasing the city works to a powerful and 
corrupt ring, in spite of the well-known and vigorously manifested 
opposition of the great mass of the people. So was the action of the 
black Congress that gave away the people's franchises and money 
and lands to the schemers who projected the Pacific roads. Men of 
America, do you govern the country ? Is it your will that is done in 
Senate Chamber and council hall or is it the will of the Oil Trust, 
Sugar Trust, Whisky Trust, the railways, and the bankers? He is 
the sovereign whose will is in control. You are not sovereign, for 
many things you wish to have done remain undone, and many things 
are done that you do not wish to have done. Politicians call you 
sovereigns in their campaign speeches. But it is not true. You 
have the privilege of choosing which of two or three sets of sovereigns 
you will have to rule over you, but you are not sovereigns yourselves. 
The men you elect are your masters during their term of office. You 
come to them, not as sovereigns to their servants, but as subjects, 
with humble petitions, which you are not surprised to see them reject 
or ignore. They give away your property and you are helpless; they 
pass laws without your approval and against your interest and you 
can not prevent their taking effect; they refuse to take action on 
your most pressing needs, and you are powerless until the expiration 
of their deeds of sovereignty gives you an opportunity to choose a 
new lot of masters to rule you for another term. This is not a govern- 
ment by the people, but a government by an aristocracy of office- 
holders elected by the people. You call your rulers "representa- 
tives;" and to some extent they are such. Honesty and coincidence 



8 DIRECT LEGISLATION. 

of interest do lead them to carry out your will to some extent, but 
they are free to legislate for their own private interests or the interests 
of those who furnish inducements for action in their behalf and the 
people can not prevent it. Representatives have their uses. You 
need the aid of specialists in legislation, but you do not need to part 
with your rightful control of your own affairs when you seek their 
aid and council any more than you need to part with it in dealing 
with a tailor, a doctor, or an architect. 

It is well to employ an architect when you are going to build, but 
you would never think of giving him power to draw up his plans and 
put them into execution without submitting them to you for approval; 
much less would you give him a right to refuse to alter his plans in 
accordance with your request, or to decide how much of your money 
should be spent without recourse to you for assent, or to expend your 
funds for a structure which you strongly disapproved and against 
which you loudly protested. You would avail yourself of the archi- 
tect's skill inthe drawing of plans, but you would feel free to tell him 
what sort of a house you desired, and would expect him to act upon 
your directions and suggestions, and to submit his plans to you for 
approval or rejection before beginning to build on your land and on 
your credit or with your cash. In this case you would continue to 
control your affairs while availing yourself of the architect's widsom 
and skill. In the first case the control of your affairs would be in 
the architect, not in you. 

It is the same with legislation. Doubtless it is well to seek the aid 
and counsel of men well versed in law and skilled in the phrasing of 
statutes, but it is not necessary to give these men the power to ignore 
our petitions, nor the right to put the laws they plan in execution 
without allowing us time and opportunity to express our disapproval 
and rejection if we wish to do so. There are cases of extreme urgency, 
in which the architect or the legislative agent must be permitted to 
act without waiting to consult his principal. Fire, flood, or other 
unforeseen event may make it imperative that the builder should 
act on his own judgment, without an instant's delay. Likewise an 
unforeseen event endangering the public safety may make it needful 
for our legislators to act at once. But as a rule there is time for con- 
sultation and it ought to be required. If you do not require it, if 
you allow your "representatives" to put their plans into execution 
without an opportunity on your part to reject them or modify them, 
you practically place the control of your affairs in the said repre- 
sentatives for the term of their election, and self-government on 
your part ceases during the said term. 

We do not want a government by the people without representa- 
tives, nor a government by representatives without the people; but 
a government by the people with the aid and advice of representatives, 
or what is essentially the same thing, a government by representa- 
tives acting as the people's agents, subject at all times to the orders 
and instructions of the people, and to total revocation of authority 
at their will. The first is impossible in a complex society; the second 
is an abandonment of the principle of self-government; the third 
combines the good qualities of the representative system with a real 
sovereignty in the people; it secures the economies and values of 
representation without sacrificing justice, liberty, and self-government. 
It uses the legislator, like the architect, to draw up the best plans his 



DIRECT LEGISLATION. 9 

knowledge permits; it gives him a right, like the architect's in cases 
of extreme emergency, to act upon his own unaided judgment, but 
requires him at all other times to submit his ideas to his principal 
before putting them in practice, and holds him at all times subject 
to the orders anil suggestions of his principal. Such is clearly the 
ideal management of political affairs as well as of business affairs. 
Indeed, politics is itself nothing but business; the people's business 
it ought to be, and under their control. We have already seen how 
this intimate and continuous control of their representatives by the 
people can be secured in place of the present subjection of the people 
to their representatives during successive periods. It is a simple 
matter of extending the use of the referendum. 

DIRECT LEGISLATION IN USE IN AMERICA. 

It is already a fundamental fact in American government and a 
settled principle in our legislative system. 

The suggested improvement of our representative system to make 
it harmonize with the law of self-government does not require the 
adoption of any new principle or method. Both the initiative and 
the referendum have been in constant use in America ever since the 
Mayflower crossed the sea. All that is needed is an extension of 
established principles and methods to cases quite as much within 
their reason, purpose, and power as those to which they are now 
applied. 

In many New England towns we have the ideal of democracy in 
respect to local affairs. They are controlled by the people directly. 
Any 10 men, by petition to the selectmen, may secure the insertion of 
an item in the warrant for a town meeting, and so bring the matter 
before the town. Anyone may make a motion or enter the discussion, 
and all may vote. The town-meeting plan is the initiative and 
referendum applied to town business. 

Direct legislation is also used by all our States except Delaware in 
making and amending their constitutions, from which it would seem 
that our citizens are already convinced that it is the best possible 
plan of legislation, since it is the one they adopt in respect to their 
highest and most important law. 

At first, as we have said, there was no other sort of government. 
For nearly 20 years after the founding of Plymouth Colony, in what 
is now Massachusetts, the lawmaking was done in primary assembly 
of the freemen every quarter, and when the colony grew so large that 
it was difficult for the people to meet in this way four times a year, it 
was provided that every town should elect two delegates to join with 
the bench in enacting all such ordinances as should be judged good 
and wholesome, and that the whole body of citizens should meet once 
a year to have a general oversight of the doings of the delegates, 
repeal any of their acts that were deemed prejudicial to the whole, 
and pass such new measures as might be needful in the judgment of 
the people. 1 That was the referendum almost as it is advocated 
to-day. It lasted from 1638 till 1658, and in a modified form till 
1686, but it was lost to state affairs when the colony was united with 
others and the population became too large to meet even once a year. 

1 See Direct Legislation Record, 1S98, p. 33, and " Representation and Suffrage in Massachusetts, 1620- 
1691," by Prof. George H. Haynes. 



10 DIEECT LEGISLATION. 

No one in Massachusetts seems to have thought of the method of 
polling the whole citizenship on specific measures * for the reason 
may be that in those primitive, unsophisticated times the delegates 
really acted very nearly as the people wished them to. The popula- 
tion was comparatively homogeneous in interest, the disturbing influ- 
ence of powerful class and monopoly interests was unknown, and the 
modern politician had not been born. 

Still the people did preserve direct legislation in town affairs and 
in the making of the fundamental law, fondly dreaming that this 
would be sufficient to prevent any possible deflection of wily repre- 
sentatives. It has not done that, but it has proved itself the most 
perfect of all legislation. No lawmaking in the world has been so 
smooth, so wise, so effective, so free from taint or suspicion of class 
interest or corruption as the making of Amercian constitutions and 
the legislation of New England town meetings. Compare the honest, 
public-spirited, effective, progressive, and economical government of a 
Maine or Massachusetts town with the dishonest, selfish, narrow, in- 
effective, nonprogressive, and extravagant governments of our ring- 
ruled cities and you will get some idea of the natural tendencies of 
the two systems — leaving the lawmaking power with the people or 
giving it to a limited number of men to play with as they please for a 
specified time. No other part of the country can be compared to 
New England in the completeness of its local improvements, yet no- 
where is. the debt so small as in New England towns; nowhere else 
are the voters so well informed; nowhere else is such ample provision 
made for the education of children. 8 

Thomas Jefferson referred to the town meeting as "the wisest in- 
vention ever devised by the wit of man for the perfect exercise of self- 
government and for its preservation." Prof. John Fiske says that 
"Government by town meeting is the form of government most effec- 
tively under watch and control. Everything is done in the full day- 
light of publicity. The town meeting is the best political training 
school in existence. It is the most perfect exhibition of what Presi- 
dent Lincoln called ' government of the people, by the people, and for 
the people."' Prof. Bryce says, "The town meeting has been the 
most perfect school of self-government in any modern country. 
* * * It has been not only the source but the school of de- 
mocracy." 

The use of the referendum in the United States is not confined to 
town affairs and constitution making. Anyone who will go through 
the laws of the various States, marking all provisions for submitting 
to popular vote franchises, licenses, contracts, bond issues, charters, 
and all sorts of laws and ordinances, will discover a vast number of 
referendal clauses and will begin to realize how important a place in 
our law is already occupied by direct legislation in State and city 
affairs. 

i In other places the thought occurred and was acted upon. In the seventeenth century the fundamental 
law of Rhode Island required that all laws passed by the general assembly should be referred to the people, 
and this was done until the law was superseded by a royal charter. In reference to the early constitution 
of Pennsylvania, Noah Webster says, "I can not help remarking on the singular jealousy of the constitu- 
tion of Pennsylvania, which requires that a bill shall be published for the consideration of the people before 
it is enacted into a law, except in extraordinary cases," and remarks that this reduces the legislature to an 
advisory body. In Virginia, Jefferson drafted a provision that all laws, after passing the legislature, should 
be voted on by the people, and advocated it as a part of the State constitution, but it was defeated for fear 
it might touch slavery. This was the referendum in its highest form — the obligatory. 

2 See "Town and village government," by H. L. Nelson, Harper's Monthly, vol. 83, p. Ill, June, 1891, 
contrasting the effects of the New England town meetings with the effects of the village government in 
States not possessing the town meeting. 



DIRECT LEGISLATION. 11 

In the single State of Iowa a moderate search, by no means exhaust- 
ive, has revealed 30 provisions for the popular initiative and 20 pro- 
visions for the referendum, most of them obligatory; and such 
provisions are not more prevalent in Iowa than in many other States. 

The points I wish to emphasize here are: First, that our laws are 

{)ermeated by the principle of direct legislation; second, that in a 
arge body of cases the obligatory method is in use; third, that in a 
considerable number of other cases the option rests with the people; 
fourth, that in another large body of cases the option is expressly 
given to the executive or legislative authorities; and fifth, that in all 
other cases, according to the law of most of our States, 1 the refer- 
endum may be used at the discretion of the legislative authorities — - 
the legislature or council may submit any question to the voters, so 
that really the only change we ask for is the placing of the option in 
the hands of the people instead of leaving it entirely with the legis- 
lators. If it rests with the councilmen to decide whether a franchise, 
lease, or other matter shall be submitted to the voters, they will be 
ready enough to submit enactments with which they have tried to 
act honestly and in respect to which they really desire to follow the 
people's will; but when there is a steal on foot and the councils are 
conscious of dishonest purpose they will refuse to submit the matter 
to the voters. 

To leave the whole option with the legislators is to put the refer- 
endum beyond the reach of the people just when they need it most. 
As though my architect could submit his plans to me before building 
if he chose, or go ahead and build with my funds without consulting 
me, no matter how much I protested, if it suited his purpose to use 
his discretion that way. When he was acting honestly for my inter- 
est he would consult me, for he would have nothing to fear from such 
consultation; but if he were trying to put up a job on me he would 
exercise his option to act without conferring with me, because such a 
conference would greatly endanger the success of his job. 

The large experience of our cities and States with the true refer- 
endum appears to establish some very important generalizations. 

1. As a rule, much greater discrimination is used in voting on meas- 
ures than in voting on men. 

2. The referenda! voting is largely independent of party ties or the 
vote on men. Measure alter measure is voted down by the same 
citizens who sustain the party and reelect the legislature that proposes 
these measures. If it were not for the referendum — if the citizens 
had simply compound platforms to vote for, with candidates and 
party politics to obscure and overwhelm the inanimate issue, the 
people could not have expressed their will on the said measures — they 
would have been obliged to indorse measures they did not want in 
order to elect the men they did want. 

3. Laws passed by legislatures and councils are frequently rejected 
by the people. " Representation" does not represent; or, more pre- 
cisely, unguarded representation frequently misrepresents. Legisla- 
tion by final vote of the people's delegates can not be relied upon to 

1 Delaware seems to take a position ag linst any implied authority in the Legislature to submit questions 
to the people. Rice v. Foster, 4 How. (Del.), 479. The vast weight of authority, however, is the other 
way. See People v. Reynolds, 5 Gilm. (111.), 1; Ewing v. Hoblitzelle, 85 Mo., 64; 'and the citations in the 
article by C. S. Lobinger, Esq., on "Constitutional Law" in American and English Cyclopedia of Law, 
p. 1022 of Vol. VI (2d ed.t,and in Dr. E. P. Oberholtzer's "Referendum in America," published at Penn. 
University. 



12 DIRECT LEGISLATION. 

represent the people's will, but, on the contrary, may be relied upon to 
fail in such representation in a large proportion of cases, even when 
the delegates are acting honestly, with the aim of carrying out the 
wishes of the people. 

4. The action of the referendum is conservative. Changes not 
supported by strong reasons are voted down. 

5. Complex measures and those not clearly understood are apt to 
be defeated. 

6. Anything that involves a job or political trick, or is suspected of 
being tainted with corruption or injustice, is voted down on general 
principles. 

7. There is an automatic self-disfranchisement of the unfit. The 
more intelligent and public-spirited citizens take the trouble to under- 
stand the measures presented for decision and vote upon them. The 
ignorant voter and the bigoted partisan who constitute the curse of 
the ballot, sustaining corrupt machines and bosses and every political 
iniquity, are the very ones who ordinarily care least about a refer- 
endum vote. There are no offices or jobs to be won by it; no party 
success to be scored by it; what's the use of voting on it? Lack of 
interest, carelessness or lack of knowledge, and a fear that they might 
vote in the dark against their interest eliminates their vote, to the 
great purification and elevation of the ballot. Referenda on the 
liquor and gambling questions are, of course, exceptions. The 
political slums do vote in such cases, but the civic enthusiasm and 
educational energy of the better citizens, in prospect of a clear-cut 
vote on such an issue, generally lifts the ballot almost or quite as 
much as the omission of the slum vote in ordinary cases. 

8. It is clear that direct legislation is not only hi entire accord 
with American feeling and history, but is deeply embedded in our 
institutions. Both the principle and the practice of the referendum 
are familiar to our people, and its methods are not only in constant 
use in our system of lawmaking, but have a monopoly of a considera- 
ble space at each end of the scale of legislation that is under discus- 
sion and are open to engagements at the option of the legislative au- 
thorities at all intermediate points. 

Direct legislation is the sole method used at the top of the scale in 
making and amending State constitutions; and at the bottom of the 
scale in many States in the legislation of towns and school districts. 
In the intervening spaces, city, county and State legislation, the ini- 
tiative or referendum, or both, may be put in practice whenever and 
wherever the legislators and councilmen so desire. The only differ- 
ence is that at the ends of the scale the referendum is either compul- 
sory or else the option rests with the people, whereas in general as to 
intermediate areas the referendum is not compulsory, and the option 
is not with the people, but with the legislators. Now it is an un- 
doubted fact that looking at the matter in a broad way, the legisla- 
tion at the two ends of the scale we are considering is vastly superior 
to the legislation in the intervening fields. Our constitution and the 
acts of our town and school district meetings are on the whole just, 
public-spirited, clear, concise, the pride of our jurists, historians, and 
philosophers — incomparably the best legislation we have; while our 
statutes and the acts of our city councils are voluminous, complex, 
ambiguous, tainted with corruption, and saturated with the spirit of 
private interest — a by-word ail over the civilized world, so that gov- 



DIRECT LEGISLATION. 13 

ernmsnt builders in Australia urge upon their people the necessity of 
avoiding a reproduction of the American system; a disgrace to our 
civilization, a menace to our institutions. It would require a Swift 
or a Carlylc to find words to describe the botch work with which our 
statute books are annually disfigured, the inefficiency, confusion, and 
corruption that have flowed from the abuse of the representative 
principle. 

In the field where the referendum is compulsory or at the option 
of the people there is little or no trouble; but in the field where this 
is not true there are legislative evils, the remedy for which is univer- 
sally regarded as one of the greatest problems of the age. Is it not 
clear common sense to try in the middle areas the method that works 
well at both ends ? Is it not worth while at least to try the experi- 
ment of using the successful method in place of the unsuccessful one, 
especially as the only change required is the very simple and obviously 
just and proper one of transferring the referendal option from the 
people's delegates to the people themselves, so that city and State 
enactments may be brought within the rule that applies to town affairs 
and constitutional provisions, sweeping the whole extent of State and 
local legislation within the control of the beneficent principle of 
actual, continuous, and effective popular sovereignty? In almost 
every State we have a solid stone road at each end of the legislative 
highway, with a treacherous bog in the middle. Shall we not build 
the stone road through the bog, so we shall have, from end to end, a 
safe and solid roadway? 

There can be no doubt about the answer that is due to these ques- 
tions. The referendum has shown itself the best of all the legisla- 
tive methods known to us, and it is the part of wisdom to extend its 
field of usefulness, and apply it to correct the abuses resulting from 
less efficient methods. If a farmer should find that a method in use 
in two of his fields produced far better results, with less expense, 
than the methods he used on the rest of his farm, he would be foolish 
if he did not extend the use of that better method to all the fields he 
possessed to which the said method was reasonably applicable. 

CHAPTER II. 

THE DIRECT-LEGISLATION MOVEMENT A PART OF A WORLD MOVEMENT 
TOWARD LIBERTY, PEACE, AND DEMOCRACY. 

A little more than a hundred years ago every nation in the civilized 
world was under an absolute aristocracy. There were some gleams 
of freedom in England — she had her Magna Charta and Bill of Rights 
and her House of Commons, but the suffrage was exceedingly limited 
and the distribution of representation outrageously unjust, the ma- 
jority of seats in the house being controlled by a few nobles and men of 
wealth. Only in local affairs did the principles of self-government 
find anything like adequate expression. 

Transplanted in America local self-government and the fundamen- 
tals of the Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights grew into the ideal of 
complete self-government. England trod upon this ideal and it 
took up arms and drove the monarchy out of the colonies. 

Voltaire and Rousseau stirred the mind and heart of Europe. 
English thought, transformed and glorified in the flames of our Rev- 
olution, was taken to France by Franklin, Paine, and Lafayette, and 



14 DIRECT LEGISLATION. 

by the French soldiers returning from America. France took fire and 
the French Revolution burned up the Bourbon throne. 

Napoleon's armies shook every throne on the continent, overturned 
the most of them, put plebeian's in imperial places, annihilated the 
" divine right of kings," and scattered the seeds of democratic thought 
all over Europe. The soldiers of the allies returned from France 
talking of freedom and popular government. The printing press fed 
the new thought, and the students in the universities were full of 
English, American, and French ideas of liberty. The French Revo- 
lution was smothered, but only for a moment. It burst out again 
and again, not only in France, but in Italy, Austria, Germany, Spain, 
and other countries. Kings and emperors granted constitutions to 
appease the people. England reformed her representative system, 
greatly extended the suffrage, passed splendid secret-ballot and civil- 
service laws, and took effective measures against corrupt practices 
in elections. America built a republic, with government by the 
people in town affairs and constitution making, and for the rest a 
mixture of government by delegates with government by the people. 
And Switzerland evolved a republic based on the idea of government 
by the people with the aid of representatives. 

A century full of tremendous movement in the direction of democ- 
racy — 1775 all absolute monarchy or aristocracy; 1875 not an abso- 
lute government in America or Europe, except in Russia and Turkey; 
all the rest on the high ground of constitutional government, with rep- 
resentative houses and wide suffrage, or still further up the slope 
where kings and nobles entirely vanish, with a few almost at the 
top, where the people's will is sovereign all the time. From abso- 
lute king to sovereign people — from one to all — that is the funda- 
mental movement of the age, and do you think it will stop part way ? 
Will forces that the kings and emperors and aristocracies of Europe 
have not been able to resist be held in check by a few politicians 
and plutocrats? Not if the people continue to think. Not if- the 
press and the school can be kept from the schemers' control. If the 
movement toward democracy does not stop — if the evolution of 
equality in government does not cease — direct legislation must come. 
It has come in Switzerland and to a large extent in America, is used 
to some extent in England and France, is vigorously demanded in 
New Zealand and Australia, and is bound to come here and in every 
other country where the trend to democracy is strong, because there 
is no other way in which the rule of the few can be entirely supplanted 
by the rule of the many. 

The diffusion of power is the mightiest idea that is molding the 
world to-day, except the principles of love, justice, and brotherhood, 
from which it is a corollary. Direct legislation has an inevitable 
part to play in the progress toward diffusion of power, and is there- 
fore sanctioned and necessitated by the principles from which the 
ideal of diffusion is derived. 

Direct legislation, aiding diffusion, will help the cause of peace as 
well as the cause of liberty and democracy. Since the dark ages 
very few wars have been brought about by the common people. 
The reason the world is still drenched with blood every few years is 
that the men who decide on war are not, as a rule, the ones who do 
the fighting or suffer the losses of the conflict. If the men who voted 
war had to stop the bullets and pay the taxes, arbitration would 



DIRECT LEGISLATION. 15 

soon replace battle. If conciliatory proposals could Le suggested by 
initiative of the people, as well us by the President and Congress; if 

international commissioners carefully discussed and adjusted differ- 
ences, subject to a referendum, cither compulsory or on petition of the 
common people in each disputing country, instead of being subject 
to approval or rejection by a hot-headed Congress, that sees in war 
perhaps a chance for glory, profit, conquest, or political capital; if 
an appeal from the Government to the people were possible in every 
case of war, except where immediate action in self-defense were 
necessary— in short, if the final decision lay with the people on both 
sides of the line, wars would be few and far between. If the good 
Czar wants to bring about the disarmament of Europe, he can not 
do better than work for the initiative and referendum. So long as 
he works with the governments, he is dealing with men whose power 
and pride and interests of every sort are largely bound up with the 
military; but give full power to the common people and war would 
become a lost art in the civilized world. 

THE PRACTICAL DETAILS. 

Now that the principles of direct legislation are being adopted into 
the constitutions of the several States, too much importance can not 
be placed upon the practical details. The opponents of direct legis- 
lation, having failed in their opposition to the principle, are seeking to 
destroy or to make difficult the operation. 

The most effective course pursued is to insist upon a prohibitive 
percentage. Failing in that, they advocate the plan of spreading the 
percentage over a certain designated territory. That is to say, they 
would require that the percentage come from a certain number of 
counties. The advocates of these restrictions term them "safe- 
guards and limitations." If the proponents of popular government 
are not careful, these safeguards and limitations will make it so diffi- 
cult to use the instruments of direct legislation that they will defeat 
the whole scheme of popular government. It is much better not to 
have direct legislation at all unless it can be secured in a workable 
form. We are just beginning to realize that the "checks and bal- 
ances" of the Constitution have defeated the exercise of what little 
power was vested in the people by that instrument. Let us not now 
repeat the mistakes of the fathers. No real believer in democracy can 
distrust the fullest exercise of power by the people. That mistakes 
will be made by the people is conceded, but such mistakes will be 
those of the people themselves, and, having the power of self-govern- 
ment, they will profit by their mistakes. 

The real substantial power to be gained is that of the initiative 
upon constitutional amendments. Many of the opponents of direct 
legislation, when defeated, have consented to granting the power to 
the people of the initiative upon statutes. This is not sufficient. If 
one thing only can be gained, insist upon the right of the people to 
initiate and adopt constitutional amendments independent of the 
legislature. With this power in their hands, the people can secure, 
through their own action, all other reforms. 

The following analysis may serve to suggest some of the leading 
points that should be covered by a direct legislation amendment or 
statute. Provisions amounting to a new method of amending the 



16 DIRECT LEGISLATION. 

constitution or involving any changes therein would, of course, be 
invalid in a mere statute — the legislature can not change the consti- 
tution; such provisions could only be effective in a constitutional 
amendment, and if incorporated in a statute might render it void in 
toto. 

ANALYSIS OF DIRECT LEGISLATION LAW OR AMENDMENT. 

The percentages refer to the vote at the last preceding election. 

Initiative. — Five per cent of the voters of a city (or State) may propose an ordinance 
(or law) or amendment to the charter (or constitution) by imperative petition (con- 
taining the proposed measure) filed with the city clerk (or secretary of state). 

Said official shall publish such proposal at once and submit it to the people at the 
next city (or State) election occurring 20 (or 40) clays after the said filing, unless it is 
adopted by the councils (or legislature) 50 (or 130) days before said election, in which 
case it shall be subject to the referendum. 

A special election may be ordered by a 15 per cent petition, or at the discretion of 
councils (or legislature) or of the mayor (or governor). 

Referendum. — All measures proposed by the people, and all enactments of councils 
(or legislatures), except urgency measures, shall be subject to the referendum. 

Five per cent of the voters of a city (or State) may demand a referendum. 1 

The mayor (or governor) or one-third of either council (or house) may order a 
referendum. 

Urgency measures are those necessary for public health, peace, or safety, passed by a 
two-thirds or three-fourths vote of councils (or legislature). 

Other enactments shall be in abeyance for 30 (or 90) days after passage by councils 
(or legislature) and publication. If within that time a referendum petition is filed 
with the city clerk (or secretary of state), the said official shall submit such measure 
to the people for final decision at the next city (or State) election, as above. 

A special election may be ordered as above. (See Initiative.) 

If no referendum petition is filed within said time, the measure takes effect under 
the same conditions" as at present. 

Franchise and monopoly grants and contracts with monopolies and every law 
granting a vested right must be submitted to the people. 

A measure rejected by the people can not be again proposed the same year by less 
than 20 per cent of the voters, nor reenacted in councils (or legislature) except by a 
two-thirds vote, and in such case must go to the polls, whether there is a referendum 
petition or not. 

A measure once approved by the people can not be altered or repealed without a 
referendum. 

When a law is declared unconstitutional, the governor or the legislature may, and 
on a 15 per cent petition shall submit the law to the people, and if approved by them 
it shall, thereafter be law, notwithstanding said decision. (This amounts to a new 
means of amending the constitution.) 

How far the referendum or reference to the people should be made 
obligatory is a very important question. The direct citizen vote is 
already obligatory in respect to constitutional amendments and the 
affairs of towns under the New England system ; and in a number of 
States a citizen vote is necessary to certain franchise grants, public 
purchases, bond issues, etc. In several of the Swiss Cantons the law 
exempts urgency measures, leaves transactions that do not go beyond 
established routine to take effect if not objected to, and in all other 
cases requires the submission of each and every legislative act to the 
people as a matter of course and without any referendum petition. 

1 Five per cent is by some considered too large when applied to populous cities or States, as 5 per cent of 
a very large voting population- would place too great a difficulty in the way. It is proposed that a definite 
number be fixed, as 3,000 for a city or 10,000 for a State, or 5 per cent when such definite numbers would 
exceed 5 per cent. The following "is a good wording: "Three thousand voters, or a number equal to 5 per 
cent of the total of votes cast at the last preceding election, if such percentage is less than 3,000." Or incase 
of a State: "Ten thousand voters or a number equal to 5 per cent of the total votes cast at the last preceding 
election, if such percentage yields a number less than 10,000.'-' This option would require 5 per cent, unless 
such 5 per cent would amount to more than 3,000 in case of a city, or 10,000 in case of a State. Whichever 
was least in any case, the 5 per cent or the fixed number would govern that case. Five per cent of a small 
voting population would be easy to secure; in a large voting population the above-mentioned option would 
.be desirable. 



DIRECT LEGISLATION. 17 

Matters of routine may be defined as including appropriations, 
purchases, contracts, and other acts that are substantially the same 
as in the preceding year. It might be well to put routine measures 
with urgency measures as exempt even from the optional referendum, 
leaving them subject to control through the initiative. But, how- 
ever that may be, they ought clearly to be exempt from the obliga- 
tory referendum. 

It seems probable that ultimately the obligatory referendum will 
be found the better form for several reasons: 

1. It saves the trouble and expense of a double appeal to the 
people, once on the petition and once on the ballot. It has been 
found in wSwitzerland that the optional referendum sometimes re- 
mains useless because the voters, wishing to invoke its aid, can not 
afford to bear the cost , so the law to which they are opposed remain 3 
unchallenged and goes into effect without a verdict of the people. 

2. The obligatory referendum does not play informer — does not 
require the disclosure of opinions, but affords the voters all the pro- 
tection of the secret ballot. The optional referendum puts the peti- 
tion signers on record and makes their opinions known, therefore it 
does not close the door so completely as the obligatory referendum 
to improper legislation that is supported by powerful employers and 
corporations against whose influence employees and others dare not 
act openly for fear of discharge, or loss of business, blacklist, boy- 
cott, etc. 

It is often the case that citizens who oppose an unjust enactment 
and would vote against it at the polls, are, nevertheless, afraid to 
record an adverse opinion by open petition; and others, though not 
exactly afraid to avow themselves, yet deem it wisest for business 
or social reasons to keep their ideas to themselves. 

3. The mere inertia of the people permits some things to pass that 
are objectionable but not sufficiently so to awaken an energetic pro- 
test, so that designing legislators are encouraged to act on the pos- 
sibility that bad laws adroitly worded may go through unnoted by 
the people, or at least escape the requisite petition till the 30 or 90 
days are up. The optional plan leaves a somewhat wider way to 
improper laws than the other, and holds out a slight hope to cor- 
ruption; an exceedingly small one, of course, for the chance of suc- 
cess is a desperate one for an evil law with the referendum in either 
form, but hope enough perhaps to invite the attempt sometimes 
when it would not be thought of under the obligatory system by 
which the chance of success is reduced almost to absolute zero. 

In all probability, however, notwithstanding the ultimate advan- 
tages of the obligatory plan, it will be best to begin with the optional 
referendum (except as to street franchises and all laws granting 
vested rights), the reasons being: (1) That during the transition from 
present methods to direct legislation there would be a volume of busi- 
ness that might prove burdensome under the obligatory system, and 
(2) that the optional form provides an intermediate step, permits a 
more gradual change to the new system, and allows the people time to 
become more accustomed to the use of direct legislation before the}' 
enter upon the full privileges and responsibilities of the obligatory 
referendum. 

S. Doc. 360, 63-2 2 



18 DIRECT LEGISLATION". 

Either the optional or the obligatory referendum, together with 
the initiative, will make our legislative system consistent throughout, 
and bring all parts of it into harmony with the fundamental princi- 
ples of liberty, self-government, democracy, and popular sovereignty, 
which it claims to regard as the essential principles of true govern- 
ment, and to which it professes an earnest desire to conform. The 
right to propose or initiate a city or state measure is like the right 
of a citizen m town meeting to make a motion upon any matter of 
business to be acted upon by the meeting, and the right of 10 citizens 
to have any subject they choose inserted in the warrant for action 
by the town ; the right to demand a vote at the polls on a given law 
corresponds to the right of a citizen in town meeting to call for the 
ayes or noes, and the obligatory referendum corresponds to the 
rule which requires the plans and proposals of town officers and com- 
mittees and all motions made at town meetings to be put to a vote 
of all the citizens who care to express themselves, whether a vote is 
asked for or not. 

It must be remembered that the referendum, in its strict sense, is 
merely preventive, whereas the initiative and referendum together 
give the people the means of construction as well as the means of 
prevention. 

The word " referendum, " however, is frequently used as synony- 
mous with "direct legislation," including both the proposal of laws 
by the voters and the reference of laws to them. 

REASONS FOR THE REFERENDUM. 
THE DOORWAY OF REFORM. 

1. It is the key to progress. It will open the door to all other- 
reforms. It is not the people who defeat reform. The people want 
honest government, civil-service reform, and just taxation. They 
vote overwhelmingly against monopoly rule, and for public owner- 
ship of street franchises and public utilities almost every time they 
have the opportunity. It is the power of money and corporate in- 
fluence and official interest that checkmates progress. Miles of 
petitions have gone in to Congress for a postal telegraph. By the 
million our people have expressed the wish for such an institution, 
and Hon. John Wanamaker says in his very able argument on the 
subject that the Western Union is the only visible opponent of the 
movement. 

Hundreds of instances might be named in which councils, legis- 
latures, and Congresses have persistently defeated the well-known 
will of the people. It is not sufficient now to educate the people to a 
new idea, or even to elect representatives on the promise to carry it 
into execution; you have also to fight the power of money and cor- 
ruption in the legislature that will steal away or put to sleep the 
ardor of your legislators. 

How important it is that progress should rest with the people free 
of hindrance from their rulers is clearly brought out in this fine passage 
from the great historian, Buckle: 

No great political improvement, no great reform, either legislative or executive, 
has ever been originated in any country by its rulers. The first suggesters of such 
steps have invariably been bold and able thinkers, who discern the abuse and de- 
nounce it and point out how it is to be remedied. But long after this is done, even 
the most enlightened governments continue to uphold the abuse and reject the remedy. 



DIRECT LEGISLATION. 19 

Wendell Phillips said: 

No reform, moral or intellectual, ever came from the upper classes of society. 
Each and all came from the protest of the martyr and the victim. The emancipation 
of the working people must be achieved by the working people themselves. 

The referendum is the key that will unlock the door to every on- 
ward movement. It will give us new reforms as fast as the people 
want them, without the necessity of waiting till the millionaires and 
politicians are ready for the curtain to go up. In this great fact lies 
the tremendous and immediate importance of the referendum r 
although it is by no means the only irresistible reason for favoring 
the movement. 

Direct legislation will give the people the power of voluntary 
movement; it will bring the public mind into connection with the 
motor muscles of the body politic; it will gear the power of public 
sentiment directly and effectively to the machinery of legislation, 
with no slipping belts, switched-off currents, or broken circuits. 

At present the pocket nerve and the corporation ganglion are fre- 
quently able to paralyze the progressive muscles and the civic con- 
science and control the body politic, and the party ganglia compel 
it to remain inactive, or else go to enormous labor and perform a 
large number of actions that are against its wish in order to accom- 
plish a few things it desires — as though a man were obliged to lift a 
50 or 100 pound spoon to his lips with each sip of soup and endure 
the pricks of several pins and needles or sit down on a tack with each 
mouthful of bread or fragment of beef, the bill of fare being written 
with those conditions, to be accepted or rejected as a whole, like the 
conglomerate platforms of our parties. 

The separation of measures accompanying direct legislation is 
another tiling that makes it par excellence the friend of progress. 
Each reform will receive as a rule the full support of all who believe 
in it without suffering from the alienation and subtraction of the votes 
of citizens who favor it but oppose some other measure with which 
it may be linked in the platform, or object to the party in whose 
platform the reform is suggested, or dislike the candidate whose name 
is tied to the movement and whose election is the only means of 
securing its success. 

PURE GOVERNMENT. 

2. Direct legislation will tend to the purification of politics and the 
elevation of government. It is not the people who put up jobs on 
themselves, but corrupt influences in our legislative bodies; the 
referendum will kill the corrupt lobby and close the doors against 
fraudulent legislation. It will no longer pay to buy a franchise 
from the aldermen, because the aldermen can not settle the matter; 
the people have the final decision, and they are so many that it might 
cost more to buy their votes for the franchise than the privilege is 
worth. It is comparatively easy for a wealthy briber to put his bids 
high enough to overcome the conscience or other resistance of a dozen 
councilmen. It is quite a different matter to overcome the con- 
sciences or other resistance of 10,000 or 100,000 citizens. Legis- 
lative bribery derives its power from the concentration of tempta- 
tion resulting from the power of a few legislators to take final action. 

It will not do to leave the referendum option with the legislators. 
They submit questions that are immaterial to them or in respect to 



20 DIRECT LEGISLATION. 

which they wish to act honestly; but they never submit a franchise 
steal to the people. When they are acting from honest motives, they 
often find the referendum very helpful in coming to a wise and just 
conclusion ; but when they are acting from corrupt and selfish motives 
they have no use for the referendum. 

The reader will remember that in examining the facts relating to 
the use of the referendum in the United States we found that the peo- 
ple have voted down all propositions that were suspected of being 
accessory to any job, and the strenuous opposition of the corrup- 
tionists to the extension of the referendum shows that they appre- 
ciate its power for purity. They know very well that corporation 
frauds could not go on, and that valuable gas, electric light, and 
street-railway franchises could no longer be given to lobbying corpo- 
rations if we had the referendum. 

A legislator may be subjected to successful pressure by street rail- 
ways, gas and electric light companies, the railroads, the oil trust, or 
the coal combine, but the citizens are too numerous, too much inter- 
ested in their own pocketbooks, and too wide awake to their own 
welfare to be wheedled or bribed or threatened into giving away 
their property or endowing big corporations with privileges and 
powers to be used to the disadvantage and oppression of the donors. 
As Prof. Brj^ce says: "The legislators can be 'got at'; the people 
can not." 

Prof. Bemis tells of a corporation voting $100,000 to buy the Chi- 
cago council as calmly as it would vote to buy a new building, and 
says that, according to a reliable attorney, such a proceeding was an 
ordinary thing. Under the referendum such proceedings would not 
take place, because they would be of no use. The referendum des- 
troys the power of legislators to legislate for personal ends. 

The referendum will be the death of the lobby. It will be imprac- 
ticable to lobby the people because of their number. And it will be 
useless to lobby the legislators, for they can not deliver the goods. 

No doubt persuasion will still be used with legislators as the first 
and easiest method of initiating legislation, but the lack of finality in 
the action of legislative bodies will take away its commercial value, 
and the lobby or "third house" as it exists to-day will dissolve. 
Log-rolling and minority obstruction will also lose their power, and 
dishonest men will be much less likely to buy legislative positions and 
other offices, because they can not make them pay. 

Blackmailing will be destroyed as well as the corrupting power of 
the lobby. The referendum works both ways; it keeps the corpora- 
tions from using the legislature for their private gain, and it also keeps 
the legislators from blackmailing the corporations by introducing 
bills injurious to them, so that they will offer large sums to have the 
bills quashed — a shameful practice prevailing to a large extent in 
some of our legislative bodies. 

The unguarded representative system or delegation of uncontrolled 
law-making power to a small body of legislators has utterly failed to 
check class legislation or the growth of monopoly and corruption. 
On the contrary, these evils have increased in city and State where 
the delegate system has control, whereas in town affairs and consti- 
tution making, and city business so far as referred to and controlled 
by the people, the said evils are comparatively unknown. This con- 



DIRECT LEGISLATION. 21 

trast vividly illustrates the power for purity that direct legislation 
possesses. 

As we shall see below, the force of partisanship will diminish by the 
referendum. Party success will no longer mean power to mold the 
laws of a city or State for one or more years. And the intensity of 
party feeling will diminish as the value of the prize to be won is les- 
sened. The weakening of partisanship will react on the executive 
department, and the spoils system will have less hold on the Gov- 
ernment even before civil-service regulations are thoroughly formed 
and enforced. 

As we have seen, the obligatory referendum would be most effective 
in checking corruption; but even the optional referendum will make 
corrupt legislation a» dangerous and unprofitable thing. The mere 
fact that the right of appeal to the people exists within the reach of 
a reasonable percentage of voters will purify legislation at its source. 

3. Demagoguery and the influence of employers over the votes of 
their employees will be diminished factors in elections. When the 
question is voting an office to A or to B, one as good as the other for 
all the voter knows, a $2 bill or the wish of his employer may seem 
to the voter to be worth more than the problematical difference 
between the two candidates, for whatever their platforms and prom- 
ises there is little possibility of telling what they will do when elected. 
But when the question comes directly home to the self-interest of the 
voter on a bill to give away public property, or franchisee, or make 
an extravagant contract, etc., the voter will use the protection of the 
secret ballot and record his opinion, regardless of .$2 bills or the 
wishes of employers. 

Even the ignorant voter will be rescued by the referendum to some 
extent. The demagogue and politician will lose a large part of their 
power to prejudice and confuse when the issue is a single clear-cut 
question of money, property, or public policy, instead of the present 
entanglement of measures and men tossed together in a confused heap 
for the express purpose, one might think, of affording demagogues 
their golden opportunity to prejudice men against the whole "heap" 
by centering attention upon some objectionable feature of it and 
ignoring the good features or lying about them, or to prejudice men 
in favor of the whole by reversing the process of deception. 

4. The power of rings and bosses will be greatly reduced by the 
referendum; directly so far as concerns the large portion of their 
power, which depends on controlling legislation; indirectly so far as 
concerns their administrative power. Nothing will do more than 
the referendum for the cause of civil-service reform, and the awaken- 
ing of a strong interest in politics and the ballot on the part of our 
best people, and these things will quicklv abolish the boss and the 
ling- 

5. Partisanship will sink into comparative insignificance in the 
government of the country. At present about all the guide the aver- 
age voter has is the party to which he belongs. He knows little or 
nothing of the candidates on either side. There are only a few things 
much talked of in the campaign, so far as his party papers and speak- 
ers bring him information, and he thinks his party is right on these 
things, or he votes with it because his father did or his employer, and 
because there is no particular reason appealing to his interests to pre- 
vent him from doing so. But when specific measures are submitted 



22 DIRECT LEGISLATION. 

separately to the people in the precise form in which they are to take 
effect, voting will assume a denniteness heretofore unknown, and the 
citizens will vote on each measure as they believe their interests re- 
quire, and will not be likely to rob themselves or disregard what they 
believe to be for their benefit, merely to please a party machine. 
Experience with the referendum plan in town affairs — voting on city 
franchises and making constitutions — abundantly proves that the 
voters do not keep to party lines when it comes to opening streets, 
building schoolhouses, making appropriations, and acting on any. 
matters of business, the drift of which is clearly brought home to 
them. Not only will the interest of the voter lead him away from 
partisanship, but the outside pressure tending to make him a partisan 
will be much less, since the larger part of the motives for that pressure, 
the legislative and administrative spoils to be gained by party success, 
will disappear; the first as a direct consequence of the referendum, the 
second as an indirect consequence through the favored growth of civil- 
service reform. 

SIMPLIFICATION. 

6. The referendum will simplify as well as purify elections. It is 
much easier to vote upon measures than men. A man is a cyclopedia 
of measures bound in mystery; even his character is a puzzle, for the 
main business of opposing politicians is to fling mud at each other's 
candidates until it is impossible to tell how much is mud and how much 
is man, or some other animal. 

After throwing all the mud they can dig up or manufacture, the next 
duty of the politicians is to pile up a lot of high-sounding words into 
sentences that will come as near as possible to covering any conceiv- 
able thing that a council, legislature, or congress may do, and call it a 
platform, to remind us of its likeness to the board contraption at the 
business end of a summer convention, used for the speakers to stand 
on during the rumpus and afterward cut up for kindling. 

Instead of a tangled mass of ignorance and vituperation, the 
referendum will bring to the voters a series of clear-cut measures, 
each to be decided on its own individual merits. Shall we have pro- 
portional representation? Shall women vote on the same terms as 
men ? Shall street-car companies be required to put effective fenders 
and vestibules on the trolley cars? Shall towns and cities have the 
right to build or buy, own and operate municipal gas and electric 
light works if they wish ? Shall they own and operate street railways ? 
Shall they make their own charters? These are questions easily 
understood and capable of decision without the perplexing admixture 
of personal considerations or inquiries as to whether a Democratic 
candidate for office did not behave with becoming modesty in early 
life, or loves liquor too well, or whether the tariff ought to be higher, 
or silver freer, or whether the hard times or the good times came in 
under Republican or Democratic administration. 

That the referendum would disentangle issues is one of its most 
weighty claims to our attention. At present we have to put up with 
the splinters in the bread, the hairs hi the butter, and the salt in the 
ice cream or go without our food. The party cooks stand smiling and 
bowing before you, urging then bills of fare on which you can plainly 
read such questions as these: "Will you eat a hash of chicken and 
dog meat, or will you have beef and rat tail in croquettes?" "Will 



DIRECT LEGISLATION. 23 

you drink coffee steeped in vinegar or chocolate flavored with gall?" 
The party tailors fix up three or four suits for you to choose from. 
"Will you wear black clothes with yellow stripes and a very tight 
belt, or a gray suit with bright-green shirt ancl corn-creating shoes; 
or a silk hat, red overalls, and a green necktie?" 

7. The referendum will simplify and dignify the law. A law that 
is to be submitted to the people with any great hope of its adoption 
must be reduced to its lowest terms, and we shall stand a chance 
of avoiding in future the piling up of massive tomes of useless enact- 
ments which the legislature itself knows little or nothing about a 
month or two after their passage, even if understood at the time, 
and which became law to buttress some private interest or to fill up 
the time of our legislators, who, being elected to make the State's 
laws, seem to measure the fulfillment of their duty by the number of 
bills they enact. David Dudley Field estimated in 1871 that if the 
enacting of local laws were left to the communities to which they 
apply the work of the New York Legislature would be reduced 95 
per cent. Eltweed Pomeroy says that in 1892 alone New Jersey 
passed 600 laws, many a one of which was longer than the whole 
Justinian Code that governed the Roman world for centuries. These 
New Jersey laws also have been examined and nearly the whole of 
them found to be (1) local or special laws, or (2) laws that fall under 
a principle already established, so that they are mere senseless repe- 
titions, or (3) acts in private or corporate interests that ought never 
to have been passed by any body, local or State. In later years the 
legislature seemed to get tired sooner than in 1890, and at one session 
passed only about 400 laws, but they have kept up their reputation 
lor useless enactments pretty well, although some good laws were 
passed. 

Under the referendum the yearly output of New Jersey's law 
factory would probably be reduced from 400 or 600 to 20 or 30. 
Such at least is the result indicated by the experience of Switzer- 
land/ and such is the reason of the case upon an analysis of the laws 
now enacted. The principles of the common law, with a few simple 
modifications, are entirely sufficient for any State. There would be 
more justice and less litigation by far if courts were left free to apply 
broad principles instead of being compelled to give attention to the 
rigid language of narrow-minded, short-sighted legislators, and if 
men were able to carry the law in their consciences instead of requir- 
ing a two-horse team to convey it and a line of lawyers and judges 
from the justice court to the Supreme Court of the United States to 
explain it to them, and then be in danger that they will turn round next 
day and declare it is the other way. It is one of the most ridiculous 
things in modern civilization that every man is presumed to know 
the law, while everybody knows that nobody knows it, not even the 
judges of the Supreme Court. It is impossible to keep track of one- 
thousandth part of the statutes of State and Nation. The legislators 
do not know much about them by the time the ink is dry except, 
perhaps, the bills they drew themselves, and I have known legislators 

1 For the last 20 years the Cantons of Berne and Zurich, where they have the obligatory referendum, 
have passed an average of four or five laws a year, and these laws are short, simple, and easily understood. 
In a recent Swiss national legislative session, of the usual activity, 65 measures were introduced and 24 
passed. The New York Legislature about the same time passed 700 laws, and the measures introduced 
into Congress reached the enormous total of 24,000. It is said that Switzerland has less than one-seventh 
as many lawyers as we have in proportion to population. 



24 DIEECT LEGISLATION. 

who did not know much about their own bills even while advocating 
them. But if some poor fellow in blissful ignorance happens to run 
up against some words in a musty volume in the law library, and 
his enemy's lawyer happens to find those words, the poor innocent 
has to suffer for not sitting up nights to learn the statutes. The 
fact is that our legislatures spend most of their time in establishing 
stumblingblocks in the paths of justice and the people, and the 
referendum will not be long in use before the great mass of statute 
law will be replaced by a few simple provisions impartial to all, in 
thorough accord with justice, and easy to learn. 

Local legislation should be performed by counties and munici- 
palities under general State laws, and private legislation should not 
be tolerated at all. Numerous bills that are now rushed through, 
very often without discussion or understanding by the legislators, 
would never be introduced under the referendum, the certainty of a 
popular veto making them hopeless. I have even known lawyers to 
secure the introduction of a bill to change the law applicable to a 
case they had in hand so it would work in their favor. Such action 
is an invasion of the judicial field by the legislative power. 

The Nation is deluged with laws, 13,000 new ones altogether in a 
single year sometimes, and the people know nothing of most of them 
till they see them in the newspapers, when it is a good while too late 
to stop them, and indeed not 1 per cent of the people have time or 
interest or eyesight to go through the wilderness of nonpareil non- 
sense and the muss of technicalities called laws. 

Direct legislation will stop a large part of the present lawmaking, 
turn over another large part to municipalities, and simplify what 
remains to the infinite relief of the people and the great lightening 
of the burden now resting upon our legislatures. 

RESPECT FOR LAW. 

8. The referendum will aid the enforcement of the law, for the 
people will grow up with it. It will be law because the people want 
it, and they will stand behind it and see that it is carried into effect. 
Nothing is of more importance to a nation than a deep reverence for 
law; but reverence dies when legislation is dragged in the mire, and 
when the people regard the law-making bodies with dread and disgust. 

ELEVATING POLITICS AND ATTRACTING GOOD MEN TO PUBLIC LIFE. 

9. The referendum will elevate politics as a profession and bring 
the best men again into political life. Government is intrinsically the 
noblest of all professions, for it includes and controls all others, as the 
captain of a ship holds the destiny of all on board. But when power 
is prostituted to evil ends it becomes despicable. The people no 
longer regard .membership in a city council or a legislature as a badge 
of honor, but rather as a mark of suspicion. He is most probably in 
league with the powers of darkness or he would not have been elected. 
Honest men have little weight in the councils of many of our cities; 
they find the atmosphere uncongenial, and retire in disgust, or if they 
persist in their duty they are soon hounded out by the ring, which 
finds them inconvenient. Many of our wisest and purest men look 
on politics as too dirty to touch. They will not descend to the mean- 



DIRECT LEGISLATION". 25 

ncss and cunning usually necessary to secure office, nor subject them- 
selves to the cruel suspicions and slanders that often accompany 
public life. Mud slinging and the winning power of chicanery too 
often discourage the wise and good and leave the field to the most 
callous and unscrupulous. 

With the referendum all this will change. Attention will be di- 
rected from men to measures. The power for evil of our office holders 
will shrink to a small fraction of its present bulk. Bad men will be 
discouraged from entering or continuing in politics because they will 
no longer be able to accomplish their evil purposes. With these 
changes the suspicions and mud flinging now so prevalent will decrease, 
because their causes will subside. As discussion of specific measures 
takes the place of partisan abuse, men of probity and wisdom will feel 
their influence with the people increase, and will delight to exercise 
their powers of mind and conscience in the direction of public affairs 
when they can do so without stain or ignominy. The increasing 
weight of goodness and the returning purity 01 political life will 
induce our best men once more to take a leading part in it and stand 
for office in council, legislature, and Congress as they used to do in 
the patriotic days of the Revolution. 

10. The referendum will help to bring out a full vote of the better 
and more intelligent citizens, while it would tend, as a rule, to elimi- 
nate the votes of the less intelligent — the very reverse of the effects 
which the present system tends to produce. While speaking of the 
use of the referendum in the United States we called attention to a 
number of facts showing the general tendency of the referendum to 
cause an automatic disfranchisement of the unintelligent, so that we 
will confine ourselves here to the other branch of the proposition 
before us. 

In the first place the interest will generally be more distinct in a 
vote on the grant of a franchise, civil-service reform, appropriations 
for roads, schools, etc., than on a vote whether A or B shall be 
councilman or mayor. And in the second place, the effectiveness of 
the vote will be greater. The influence of these facts in securing a 
full vote has been very noticeable when Boston, New York, and other 
cities have submitted questions to the direct vote of the people. In 
presidential and gubernatorial elections, when a heavy vote is polled, 
it is often largely due to the enthusiasm created by some great issue 
involved in that election ; when no such issue is at stake the mere vote 
for candidates is usually much smaller. In the ordinary process of 
making laws people think that one of two machines will do the work 
anyway, it makes little difference which, and interference is useless. 
It will make no odds whether they go to the polls or not. They can 
not accomplish anything except by using the methods of the machine 
and sinking to the level of unscrupulous, conscienceless war. Mr. 
Arrowsmith says: 

A few years ago the New Jersey Legislature submitted to the citizens of Orange the 
acceptance or rejection of a measure providing for the election of a new officer, presi- 
dent of council, at a salary of $1 ,000 per annum . Now. out of a citizenship of upward 
of 5,000 almost altogether opposed to it, only a small percentage of the voters expressed 
themselves upon the question. I did not vote upon it, and Bay neighbors exhibited 
a similar indifference. Why? Simply because we Orange folks knew that our wishes 
would be set at naught, and the politicians would come to Trenton and carry their 
point with or without our consent. 



26 DIKECT LEGISLATION". 

Such a reference was not a referendum, because the vote of the 
people was not intended to be final. It was a sham; the people 
knew it lacked effectiveness, and although they were interested hi 
the question, they stayed at home. The real referendum is final 
and effective, and encourages the people to go to the polls for the 
same reason that it encourages the best men to enter political life. 
It is full of strength, hope, and progress. Let the people once feel 
that they are really sovereign and they will vote and look after their 
own interests, and instead of 40 to 60 per cent stay-at-homes among 
the "better classes," who leave the field to the machines, we shall 
have a reasonably satisfactory expression of the people's will. Ask 
a man if he wants a tenderloin steak or a bit of leather for his dinner 
and if he knows he will get leather anyway he may keep his mouth 
shut; but if he knows that what he says will settle the question, he 
will express himself vigorously. 

HELP THE PAPERS TO TELL THE TRUTH AND USE DIGNIFIED ENGLISH. 

1 1 . The elevation of the press is one of the effects of the referendum, 
and one which alone is sufficient to make it an incalculable boon. One 
of the most noticeable and important of all the many changes pro- 
duced in Switzerland by the adoption of direct legislation is the sub- 
stitution of fair debate for noisy vituperation in the columns of the 
daily papers. It will do a similar work in America, and the Lord 
knows that we sorely need such a change. As measures are put in the 
place of men, sober discussion will take the place of the traffic in abuse. 
The tendency to manufacture facts and deluge the country with 
sophistries will not so readily yield, but even in this respect there is 
sure to be a great improvement. When the people come to direct 
their own affairs they will demand the truth; they will want the 
actual facts, so that they may judge correctly in respect to their 
business, just as a board of directors of a private corporation wants 
the facts, and regards deception of themselves as one of the most 
unpardonable sins. 

THE PEOPLE'S UNIVERSITY. 

12. Direct legislation will have a profound educational effect. 
Wendell Phillips said long ago that the discussions accompanying 
presidential elections give the people a tremendous intellectual lift 
every four years. With the referendum, the progress will be con- 
tinuous instead of spasmodic, with intervals wide enough for the 
pupils to forget nearly all that they learn at each lesson, as at present. 

Nowhere on the face of the globe do you find as high an average of 
keen intelligence as among the men of a New England town trained 
from boyhood in the town meeting. Continual voting on measures sup- 
plies an invaluable discipline in place of the retrograde influences often 
involved in personal elections. Every citizen's sphere of thought and 
responsibility will be enlarged by the referendum, and growth will be 
the result. Besides being a university in itself, the referendum will 
make the public welfare depend so directly and obviously on the 
morality and intelligence of the people, and not on the sagacity and 
probity of a few individuals, that patriots, statesmen, and business 
men will combine to develop to the utmost every means of educating 



DIRECT LEGISLATION". 27 

the masses, and a great impetus will be given to popular education, 
with a corresponding improvement in the results. 

It is interesting to note that, according to Mulhall, Switzerland is the 
best schooled country in the world. The percentage of children 
attending school is far above that in any other country in Europe or 
any State in America. The per capita expenditure for education is 
correspondingly high, and the diffusion of knowledge is remarkable. 
The referendum educates the people directly and creates a powerful 
sentiment in favor of the thorough education of the children. 

DEVELOPS MORALS AND MANHOOD. 

13. The emotional development of the people, as well as their intel- 
lectual growth, will follow from the referendum. The consciousness 
of added power and responsibility will give the voters a new dignity 
and a nobler manhood. They will feel like judges in the court of 
final appeal. Not mere selectors of somebody to boss them but 
rulers themselves. Not mere nominators of a sovereign but sover- 
eigns. Such changes in spiritual attitude and environment always 
work most powerfully upon the moral and emotional development of 
the individual and the race. The patriotic, law-abiding, law-enforc- 
ing sentiments of the people will be specially intensified by the refer- 
endum, because they will know that the country is theirs not merely 
in name but in fact; not merely to live in and use as some one else 
bids them but to mold and control for themselves. 

A STEADYING INFLUENCE — THE SOCIAL FLYWHEEL. 

14. The referendum favors stability by developing patriotism and 
education, securing greater simplicity and better enforcement of law, 
driving bad men out of politics and bringing good men in, supplying 
a safety valve for populav discontent, and requiring a more careful 
consideration of legislation. Long use of the referendum has shown 
that it is conservative. This clearly appears from the facts already 
stated concerning its use in this country, and its record in Switzerland 
for 30 years shows that two-thirds of the measures submitted to the 
people were rejected by them. If the votes of the legislators had 
been final, many of the rejected measures would have been law and 
some of the best measures adopted by the people would not have been 
passed by the legislators. An open door to popular decision gives 
discontent a peaceful vent — prevents its accumulation and draws it 
away from destructive methods of escape. The present system 
affords it no reasonable means of exerting its power, and allows it to 
accumulate indefinitely. The importance of this matter can hardly 
be overestimated. Anglo-Saxon manhood, confined beneath the 
pressure of accumulating injustice, is the most dangerous explosive 
known to history. Macaulay predicted that it would destroy 
America — industrial oppression of hopeless masses leading to revolu- 
tion; but Macaulay did not know about the referendum that is going 
to relieve the pressure, we hope, before the explosion comes. 

The referendum reduces to a minimum the danger of broken peace. 
Nothing can oppose so strong a bulwark against an appeal to passion 
a& the knowledge that the people made the law and can change it 
when they please — the knowledge that there is no selfish power, deaf 
to reason and impervious to sympathy, imprisoning progress in the 



28 DIRECT LEGISLATION. 

dungeons of iniquity, whence only force can hope for speedy release, 
but that deliberate and careful discussion before the great, honest, 
justice-loving people will remedy every wrong. Such knowledge will 
remove the causes that have produced the growth of anarchy. It is 
smothering discontent in hopelessness that breeds poison. Every 
anarchist I ever heard express himself had much of truth in what he 
said. It was his hopelessness of obtaining the justice he sought by 
peaceful means that made him advocate fire and bomb. An anarchist 
generally is a man who feels intensely the pressure of wrong condi- 
tions, and whose nature has more of recklessness than hope. Give 
us the referendum and the path will be so plain that anarchy will 
soon go out of business. There is no such thing in Switzerland. It 
is foreign to real democracy, for there the obstruction to your wishes 
is the people, and you can't get rid of them with a bomb. 

It is sometimes objected by those who oppose direct legislation 
that the initiative will give all sorts of cranks a chance to bring their 
ideas to the front. But that is really one of the advantages of the 
institution. It enables discontent to find out just how big it is, 
gives it form and precision, sifts out the kernel of truth and justice 
at the heart of it, lifts it into the fresh air of public discussion before 
it has a chance to ferment and explode. Even the worst cranks 
would probably be diverted from violence to peaceful petitions and 
efforts to educate the public to their ideas. The petitions would 
cause no trouble, not even the effort of a veto, until they rose to 
20,000 in Massachusetts and 70,000 in New York, and if there were 
20,000 citizens in the Bay State who were united in the opinion that 
a certain change should be made in the law of the State, surely the 
matter would be worthy the careful attention of the people. 

Under the referendum the street car men of our cities would not 
give up their work for the privations and turmoil of a strike, nor 
would they suffer in hopeless silence, but they would state their 
grievances at the head of a petition for the referendum on municipal 
ownership of the roads, and get their friends to circulate it, and then 
vote the secret ballot for the transformation that would give them a 
voice in the government of the industry in which they are engaged. 

Under the referendum the unemployed would not parade the 
streets of our cities in angry, hopeless mobs, but they would set the 
wheels of the law in motion to give them complete justice instead 
of the patchwork of hated charity. 

Not only will revolutionary and disruptive forces become compar- 
atively harmless under the referendum, and progressive forces work 
more smoothly and steadily, but even the unavoidable difficulties 
and errors incident to the government of large bodies of men will be 
more serenely and calmly dealt with. People are not so apt to find 
fault with what they do themselves as with what is done by others. 
Take a man who is scolding about something and prove to him that 
it is his own doing, and he becomes quiet and moderate. Watch a 
mechanic trying to use a defective piece of machinery made by some- 
one for whom he is not responsible, and see how blue the air will be 
with deprecation or something worse; but let him endeavor to use 
an imperfect machine made by himself, and see how good-natured 
and tolerant he is, and how patiently he seeks to remedy the defect. 
So censure and ridicule without measure are heaped upon the acts of 
councils, legislatures, and Congresses, but note the atmosphere of 



DIRECT LEGISLATION. 29 

quiet acquiescence when the people have spoken, even though the 
interests involved are of the most tremendous moment and the pre- 
ceding struggle was most intense. 



ECONOMY. 



15. Large economies will result from direct legislation through the 
stopping of jobs, extravagant contracts, corrupt legislation of all 
sorts, cutting down the power of bosses and rings, simplifying the 
law, reducing litigation, and diminishing even the expenses of legiti- 
mate government. 

When the people really make the laws, they will arrange things for 
their interests. They will banish unnecessary offices, reduce the 
salaries of lofty officials, abolish jobbery and extravagance, get rid 
of the iniquitous spoils system, cut down the power of corporate 
wealth, rescind all forfeited franchises, and take control of misbehav- 
ing monopolies. Economy, justice, and purity will go hand in hand. 
Ring rule and class legislation will die, and politicians will lose their 
power, because they can no longer command rewards for their sup- 
porters, no jobs, no fat contracts, no rich franchises. The cost of 
taking the referendum vote will be very slight; not so much as the 
saving on many a single contract; not a half of the saving on the one 
item of printing the laws; not a tenth of the value of many a franchise 
it will keep from being stolen. 

IDENTIFICATION OF POWER WITH PUBLIC INTEREST. 

16. The referendum will identify power with the public interest. 
One of the prime sources of evil in our government to-day is the 
possession of vast political power by private interests. History 
shows that the law is in the main the expression of the interest of the 
lawmaker. If the law is to be in the people's interest, it must be 
their act; the enacting and approving power must be in the people. 
Power is used in the interest of its possessor. If the power of govern- 
ment is to be used in the interest of the people, they must have con- 
tinuous and effective control of the government. 

Government should be so arranged that interest and power will 
coincide with justice and the public good. This can only be the case 
when the real control is in the whole body of citizens of full age and 
discretion and good character, for the interest of a part is not identical 
with the interest of the whole, and so far as power is possessed by a 
part its exercise may deviate from justice and the public good. 

THE WORKINGMAN'S ISSUE. 

17. The referendum will give labor its true weight. Labor's 
interest in the referendum is measureless; it is par excellence the 
workingman's issue. The present delegate system places labor at 
tremendous disadvantage as compared with capital. Nearly all the 
delegates are wealthy or sympathize with the wealthy, or are under 
their influence. Labor can not expect a great deal from legislators; 
and the weapon it has largely relied upon, the organized strike, is 
being abolished by injunction. Not without reason, for it is certainly 
against the public interest to allow a big corporation and its employees 
to settle their disagreements by private war in the heart of a great 



30 DIRECT LEGISLATION". 

city, to the vast disturbance of business and perhaps the destruction 
of life and property — just as much against the public interest as it 
would be to allow two individuals to settle a dispute by conflict in 
the public streets. Nevertheless, labor is coming to be in a very 
tight place without the strike and without effective representation 
in the halls of legislation. What is the remedy? Courts of com- 
pulsory arbitration would do some good, but the fundamental consti- 
tutional cure is direct legislation. 

Labor unions recognize quite generally the importance of direct 
legislation to them. As early as 1891, 10 of the largest national and 
international trades-unions (with a membership close to 200,000) 
were using direct legislation. The same year Grand Master Workman 
Powderly recommended the adoption of the referendum in political 
government. From 1892 direct legislation was the only political 
demand of the American Federation of Labor until 1894, when others 
were added. It has been repeatedly and emphatically indorsed by 
this powerful organization, and its president, Samuel Gompers, is a 
firm believer in the movement. 

THE PEOPLE'S ISSUE. 

18. Not the producing classes alone, but every other class in the 
community will be benefited by the referendum. It must be clear 
by this time that all who wish justice and good government will be 
benefited by direct legislation, and it is equally true that even the 
bosses and tricksters will receive a priceless boon by the removal of 
the temptations that help to make them evil men, and the establish- 
ment of conditions tending to lift them to a nobler plane of life. 
Under the referendum those who desire political power must become 
true-hearted orators and public-spirited philosophers instead of 
accomplished wire pullers. 

The referendum is in no true sense either a class measure or a party 
measure. A single case may serve to bring the matter strongly to 
mind. In Nebraska, in 1896, the Republicans submitted 12 amend- 
ments to the people and were defeated by the Populists at the polls, 
but the amendments received majorities ranging from 54 to 70 per 
cent of the votes cast, while the Populist majorities on the 11 State 
officers elected and on the presidential electors ranged from a plural- 
ity of 50 per cent to a majority of 54 per cent. 

A COROLLARY FROM ESTABLISHED LEGAL PRINCIPLES. 

SIMPLY AN APPLICATION OF THE LAW OF AGENCY. 

19. Direct legislation is simply an application of the fundamental 
principles of agency recognized in every court of justice in the civil- 
ized world, viz, that an agent must hold himself at all times subject 
to the command and approval of his principal. If you employ an 
agent to manage your business he expects to do as you say in all 
things. He will advise you, but if you are not convinced he must 
do your way and not his, and if he is not willing to do your way, he 
resigns, or you discharge him. He may plan, but you have the 
power of instant veto, and you do not have to wait till the end of 
the year. If you did, you might find your property mortgaged or 
sold or given away beyond recall. 



DIRECT LEGISLATION. 31 

Men often speak of their theories as though theywei e facts. Because 
of our theories of what government ought to be and is intended to 
be, we have fallen into the habit of calling our representatives and 
misrepresentatives the "agents" of the people; but it is not true. 
An agent may be instructed by his principal at any time, and he is 
bound to obey; he must submit his plans in respect to the principal's 
business to the principal whenever requested to do so, and the princi- 
pal may reject them or amend them if they do not suit him ; the agent's 
power may be revoked whenever he misconducts himself, and in every 
respect he is subject to the will of the principal; an instrument to 
carry it into execution, and not a person to set up his will in opposi- 
tion to the principal's and override or disregard the principal's 
wishes in his own affairs — that sort of a person is a master, not an 
agent. 

To one who understands the nature of agency, and knows that an 
agent is simply an instrument in the hand of the principal to execute 
his purposes, it sounds very odd to call city councilmen and State 
legislators "agents." They ought to be, but they are not. They 
have some of the symptoms, but in other respects they are found to 
be a very different sort of animal. Queer agents who can sell or give 
away my property against my wish and protest; queer agents who 
can refuse to manage my business in the way I tell them to, and who 
may violate my orders and disregard my instructions, and still be 
safe from discharge till the term for which I employed them to act 
for me has expired. You engage an architect to draw plans for your 
house, but you expect to have the plans submitted to you before 
your money is spent in building. Legislators are not agents, but 
masters; and the people do not, for the most part, govern themselves, 
but merely select the persons who are to govern them. These legis- 
lative masters have many interests in common with the rest of the 
people, and not infrequently wish to be reelected; so they act to a 
considerable extent as real agents would. But they are not real 
agents, for they arc not bound to act for the principal's interest or 
according to his instructions, and every now and then, when their 
interests are strongly opposed to the people's and they think they can 
act in such a way as not to arouse public indignation, or they have a 
political machine at their backs assuring reelection whatever they do, 
or the interest involved seems more important to them than the 
chance of reelection — then they give away franchises, lease city gas 
works, make bad contracts, pass laws for their private benefit, and 
act in public affairs in many a way they would never dream of acting 
if the business hi their charge had been intrusted to them by an indi- 
vidual or company employing them as agents subject to the princi- 
pal's supervision, instruction, veto, and discharge according to the 
universally recognized principles of the law of agency. A man who 
can give away my property against my protest and without redress, 
and can make laws that I have to obey for a year or two years or 
four years, till he goes out of office, is nob my agent, but my master 
for the term. 

Our legislators and officials will never be really the people's agents, 
the people's will will never be the actually and continuously govern- 
ing will, until the people claim the principal's rights of instruction 
and veto, revocation, and discharge. 



32 DIRECT LEGISLATION. 



EXPERIENCE. 



20. Experience speaks strongly for the referendum, not only from 
its successful use in the United States, but also from its use in England 
and Canada, and most eloquently of all from the splendid results of 
its complete adoption in Switzerland. 

In Canada the referendum is often used to ascertain public opinion 
on important measures and has done some excellent work in the 
same way as in our States and cities when used voluntarily by the 
legislatures or councils. 

In England the referendum principle is very effectively applied. 
Every "appeal to the people" after each dissolution of Parliament is 
practically a referendum. Parties go to the people, not with vague 
generalities muddled in a heap of promises which the promisors never 
dream anyone would be so discourteous as to ask them to fulfill, 
but with a distinct course of legislation clearly marked out, a definite 
and practical measure reduced to the very terms it is proposed to 
enact into law, an actual bill which the people sit in judgment upon, 
hear the advocates for and against, and reject or approve as they 
see fit. England is slow in some things, but the mother can teach 
the daughter a few good lessons if the young lady will only listen 
with her nose at par or lower. When the English make up their 
minds and elect a new Parliament to carry out a reform, the mem- 
bers meet at once and put the will of the people into action. The old 
Parliament is dead, and the new one begins to move as soon as the 
victory at the polls is assured. But with us it takes six months or a 
year for the new Congress to get hold of the reins, and meanwhile the 
old boys, whom the people have repudiated, continue to drive to 
destruction or anywhere else they please. 

It is to Switzerland, however, that we must turn for the fullest 
development of the referendum. Prof. Louis Waurin, of the Uni- 
versity of Geneva, says: 1 

In the middle of this century the aristocratic regime in Switzerland was suceeded 
by that of representative democracy. The pure representative system, however, was 
not destined to last long. The people soon became aware that in the latter regime 
the country was overridden by political "coteries," prone to sacrifice the general 
good to party or personal interests, and thus was brought about the development of 
direct democracy. Then appeared two institutions: The referendum and the right of 
popular initiative to which has of late been added, as a necessary complement, pro- 
portional representation. 

The evolution and effects of direct legislation in Switzerland are so 
important that a knowledge of its history there seems almost essential 
to anything like a thorough understanding of our subject. The 
following resume 2 will give the reader the principal points: 

Fifty years ago Switzerland was more under the heels of class rule than we are to-day; 
political turmoil, rioting, civil war, monopoly, aristocracy, and oppression — that was 
the history of a large portion of the Swiss until within a few decades. To-day the 
country is the freest and most peaceful in the world. What has wrought the change? 
Simply union and the referendum— union for strength, the referendum for justice. 
Union to stop war and riot — the referendum to overcome monopoly, aristocracy, and 
oppression. A solid confederation of the 22 Cantons or States, with a good constitu- 
tion, was founded in 1848. Peace followed, but the railroads, politicians, aristocrats, 
and monopolists continued to plunder the people. In 1858 a heavy subsidy was 

1 Progressive Review, London, July, 1897. 

2 A condensation for the most part from the writings of Mr. Sullivan, Mr. McCrackan, Karl Burkli, Sir 
Francis Adams, and Hon. Boyd Winchester, ex-United States minister to Switzerland. 



DIRECT LEGISLATION. 33 

granted a railroad by the Legislature of Neuchatel. This opened the eyes of the 
Switzers to the "beauties" of the representative system. They began to cast about 
for a remedy. Some of the ablest citizens had for years been calling attention to the 
value of the referendum (which was practiced in a few of the small forest Cantons), 
urging the extension of the method to other States and to the Union. The people saw 
that it was of no use to put faith in parties struggling for public office or to continue 
trying to guess which candidates mignt withstand the corruptions of power, and so 
they decided to trust themselves. In L863 and a few years following, six of the leading 
Cantons adopted the initiative and referendum, and to-day direct legislation is prac- 
ticed in all of Switzerland's cities, most of its communes, in 21 out of the 22 Cantons, 
and in the Federal Government. Fourteen of the Cantons have the obligatory referen- 
dum and seven the optional. The confederation adopted the referendum in 1874. 
The initiative is in use in 17 Cantons, and the federation adopted it in 1891. The 
referendum clause of the Federal constitution reads as follows: 

"Federal laws as well as Federal resolutions which are binding upon all, and which 
are not of such a nature that they must be dispatched immediately, shall be laid before 
the people for acceptance or rejection when this is demanded by 30,000 Swiss voters 
or by 8 Cantons." 

The amendment of 1891 provides for the initiative "when 50,000 voters demand the 
enactment, abolition, or alteration of special articles of the constitution." As con- 
stitutional lines are very loosely drawn in Switzerland, the people will be able to 
initiate almost any measure they choose. Let us look at the results. Mr. W. D.Me- 
Crackan and Mr. J. W. Sullivan have made exhaustive studies of Swiss affairs, and to 
them I owe most of the facts I give about the referendum there. Mr. Sullivan has the 
story of direct legislation in writing from Herr Carl Burkli, of Zurich, known as the 
' ' Father of the referendum, ' ' who says: ' ' The mass s of the citizens of Switzerland found 
it necessary to revolt against their plutocracy and the corrupt politicians who were 
exploiting the country through the representative system. * * * The plutocratic 
Government and the Grand Council of Zurich, which had connived with the private 
banks and railroads, were pulled down in one great voting swoop. The people had 
grown tired of being beheaded by the officeholders after every election. And poli- 
ticians and privileged classes have ever since been going down before these instru- 
ments in the hands of the people." 

The referendum lias been carried most nearly to perfection in Berne, the great canton 
of half a million people, and in Zurich, with its IMO.OOO inhabitants. The legislature 
of Zurich consists of a single house of 300 members. It meets two or three times a year 
for a two-weeks' session. It can not grant a privilege to a corporation, nor create an 
office, nor grant a contract. Every enactment, and every appropriation above the 
ordinary limited sums for purposes specified in the constitution, must go to the polls. 
And the consequences — let me quote Mr. Sullivan verbatim, so that there may be no 
mistake: "The Zurich Legislature knows nothing of bribery. It never sees a lobbyist. 
There are no vestiges remaining of the public extravagance, the confusion of laws, the 
partisan feeling, the personal campaigns, characteristic of representative Governments. 

* * * When men of Zurich, now but middle-aged, were young, its legislature prac- 
ticed vices similar to those of American legislatures; the cantons supported ma3iy 
idling functionaries, and the citizens were ordinarily but voting machines, registering 
the will of the political bosses. * * * To-day there is not a sinecure public office 
in Zurich; the popular vote has cut down the number of officials to the minimum, and 
their pay also. * * * There are no officials with high salaries. * * * There is 
no one-man power in Switzerland. * * * No machine politician lives by spoils. 

* * * fpj ie referendum has proved destructive to class law and class privilege." 
In other words, Switzerland has rid the body politic of its vermin — it has taken politics 
out of the slums and civilized it. Direct legislation has destroyed the power of legis- 
lators to legislate for personal ends, and so has punctured the heart of evil in legislation. 

One of the most valuable results has been the effect on the press. The papers no 
longer deal in spite, prejudice, sensationalism, and slander, but aim at quiet discussion 
and solid argument. Says Mr. Sullivan: "The advance of the Swiss press in power, 
in dignity, in public helpfulness since the day of direct legislation in that country has 
been one of the most remarkable facts connected with the reform." I wonder if it 
really could give our papers dignity and helpfulness and a slight respect for the truth. 
Mighty Magician, we pray for thy speedy arrival. 

The progressive power of the referendum has been wonderful. It has enabled the 
Swiss to settle quickly and easily many of the serious problems over which Americans 
have long been puzzling their heads, and in respect to which they seem little nearer a 
solution to-day than, they were 10 or 15 years ago. We have spoken of the elevation of 
the press, the overthrow of monopoly, the purification of politics and the economies 

S. Doc. 360. 63-2 3 



34 DIRECT LEGISLATION. 

resulting therefrom, and from the absence of senates, unnecessary offices, high salaries, 
and complex laws; but that is not all. Through the referendum Switzerland has 
secured public ownership of the liquor business, the manufacture of distilled liquors 
being now a national monopoly, has adopted state-life insurance, a national paper cur- 
rency, a greatly improved factory act, a uniform marriage and divorce law more liberal 
and .sensible than any of ours, established local option in capital punishment, declared 
that vaccination shall not be compulsory, that religion shall not be entirely swept out 
of the schools, and that her people are not yet ready to recognize governmentally the 
right to employment when linked with a demand for "an official status between 
laborers and employers, with democratic organization of the work in factories and 
workshops. ' ' [And the Swiss are right. It would not be just for the public to attempt 
such a reorganization until the public or the workers by purchase, or the growth of 
cooperation, have come to own the shops. Democratic organization before that would 
be confiscation.] All this since 1875, and still we have not spoken of the two most 
important movements of the referendum period, viz, improved taxation and the 
nationalization of the means of communication — both the results of direct legislation. 

Tax reform has proceeded in two directions: First, the reduction of the aggregate of 
taxation, rendered possible by the simplicity, purity, and economy of direct govern- 
ment; and second, the change of the incidence of taxation from poverty to wealth. 
The latter is one of the wisest and most significant movements of modern times, and is 
making its claims felt in all advanced countries. In Switzerland it has been carried 
far toward perfection. 

Direct and nontransferable taxes have been substituted for indirect and transferable 
taxes, and the direct taxes have been made progressive. 

Indirect taxes, or those on commodities imported, mazmfactured, sold, etc., are 
transferable from the person first paying them to the consumer, who has also to pay the 
said person interest and profits on the capital he used to settle the tax in the first 
instance, so that the rich importer or manufacturer may actually make money out of 
the tax system instead of really contributing anything out of his own pocket to the 
support of the Government; while the people who consume the commodities taxed, 
not only have to pay all the taxes, but the dealers' profits on them besides. The Gov- 
ernment treasury, after all, only receives $2 out of every three the people pay on account 
of the tax system. If the taxes are mostly on articles of ordinary use, the great body of 
the poorer people bear the bulk of taxation , and a certain class of the wealthy have no 
burden, but a profit instead. This trick of indirect taxation is what the French states- 
man Turgot called "plucking the goose without making it cackle." But the Swiss 
geese have found out the trick, and have turned it into direct progressive taxation, or 
the trick of plucking the goose where the feathers are thickest and where it will hurt 
the least. In several of the more radical cantons the rich and well-to-do pay nearly 
all the taxes. In Zurich 50 years ago all taxes were indirect; now $32 out of every $34, 
or over seven-eighths of the whole, are raised by direct and progressive taxation on 
incomes, inheritances, and real estate. 

In the case of incomes, the largest pay at a rate five times as heavy as the moderate 
ones. In the case of property, the largest fortunes pay at a rate twice as great as 
the smallest. In the case of inheritances, the tax has increased more than six fold 
in the last 30 years. The larger the amount of property and the more distant the 
relative the heavier the rate. 

The poorest laborer pays about 2 per cent of his wages in taxes, being 15 to 30 per 
cent better off than before the present system was adopted; the well-paid clerk pays 
5 per cent of his salary, being 10 to 20 per cent better off; the business man worth 
$50,000 or more pays 10 per cent of his profits, and rests about where he was; while 
the large capitalist, worth half a million or more, pays 25 per cent of his income, 
and so gives back to the public a part of the excess that he receives above what he 
earns. These laws have done a great deal to aid the diffusion of wealth and check 
the too rapid growth of overlarge fortunes, and the results are seen in the fact that, 
while Switzerland was until recently very poor, the exchanges of wealth per capita 
there are greater to-day thai) in any other country of the continent. "It is an extraor- 
dinarv fact," says Mr. Sullivan, generalizing from Mulhall's statistics, "that the 
3,000,000 Swiss consume as much wealth as the 15,000,000 Italians." That is, one 
Swiss, on the average, eats, drinks, wears, travels, and reads five times as much as 
his Italian neighbor. 

Not less important is the second great movement above mentioned — the tendency 
of the Government toward the full control of monopolies, shown in the nationaliza- 
tion of the liquor business, a portion of the forests, life insurance, and the means of 
communication and transportation. 

As a result of direct legislation, Switzerland has adopted national ownership of 
railways, and has the best system of Federal post office, telegraph, telephone, and 



DIRECT LEGISLATION. 35 

express sendee in existence. If you receive money by postal order the carrier puts 
the cash in your hands. The mail is delivered everywhere. If you want the express, 
yon send the order by the carrier. At any post office you may subscribe for any 
S»viss publication or for any of the several thousands of the world's leading period- 
icals. Letter postage in Switzerland is 1 cent, local; general, 'J cents; book, 1 cent 
a half pound: newspaper average two-fifths of a cent; express matter at correspond- 
ing rates. With the cheapest postage in the world the profits of the system are large, 

I ansa the Swiss post office docs not have to pay the railroads monopoly prices for 

transportation. 

In respect to the public telephone, the American consul at St. Grail reported offi- 
ciary May . r ), ]8!)li: "The Swiss telephone service is hotter and the rates lower than 
anywhere else in the world." 

i\s to the national ownership of railroads in Switzerland, I refer the reader to the 
circular issued by the National League for Promoting the Public Ownership of Monop- 
olies, and printed in Chapter I of this hook, at the close of the section on "Public 
sentiment." 

The wonderful success of the Swiss referendum is fully attested by the lion. Boyd 
Winchester, our former minister to Switzerland; Sir Francis 0. Adams, the English 
minister there; Prof. Vincent, of Johns Hopkins University; Mr. McCrackan, Mr. 
Sullivan, Prof. Moses, Prof. Dicey, etc. Kev. Lyman Abbott's paper, The Out- 
look, speaking of the strong words of approval eminent observers have bestowed 
upon the referendum, says: "Apparently there is no conflict in the testimony." The 
only exception I know of is Mr. A. B. Hart, who seems to have found some of the 
people in Switzerland who have lost power and privilege through the referendum 
and were therefore inclined to grow! about the new institution. Mr. Hart eonfe* 3 is 
that he went to Switzerland prejudiced against the referendum, and it is not surprising 
that he should have found the society of ousted politicians and monopolists so con- 
genial that he neglected to form other acquaintances, and filled his letter to the Post 
with assertions that the initiative "suggests bad measures" (but the legislature never 
does; no, it will not even suggest such things); that the referendum sometimes "kills 
good measures" (but of course the legislature never does); that the "Swiss voters 
do not all come out" (like the Americans do); and that "the referendum has dis- 
appointed its friends in Switzerland." This "powerful" argument, quoted in sub- 
stance from one so well prepared by foregone conclusions to make it, would almost 
lead one to believe that the famous ambassadors, professors, and authors previously 
mentioned had formed a conspiracy to deceive the world about the referendum 
were it not that Mr. Hart, on cross-examination, as it were, corroborates their testi- 
mony by saying: "Switzerland is an atoll in the surging ocean of European politics. 
Here the increasing strain which has come upon the representative institutions of 
other countries is hardly felt. Here the legislature is free from party organization, 
the business of the country is well and promptly done, the people are content with 
their representatives. * * * The process of invoking and voting on a referendum 
is simple and easily worked. * * * The system undoubtedly leads to public 
discussion; newspapers criticize; addresses and counter-addresses are issued; can- 
tonal councils publicly advise voters, and of late the Federal assembly sends out 
manifestoes about pending initiatives." How does this talk about doing the business 
promptly and well and about the people's contentment agree with what Mr. Hart 
said about "disappointment of the friends of the referendum"? As to this, one 
of the leading friends of the referendum wrote to Mr. Sullivan that it was "deeply 
rooted in the hearts of the whole people. All parties who formerly opposed the 
referendum, even the most reactionary and aristocratic, have declared officially their 
adherence to the initiative and referendum as a thoroughly good institution." No 
one objects to it now but a few individuals who stood in the path of progress and got 
hurt by the wheels of justice and who comfort themselves with ungracious talk. 

There were objections in plentiful measure during the early advocacy of the wide 
extension of the referendum, but experience has shown them all to be fallacious. 
Here are some samples: "It would do well enough in the little commune or the primi- 
tive forest canton but never would work in the grand Canton of Berne, much less in 
Federal affairs; that was visionary in the extreme. It was an impracticable thing 
anyway, and would keep the people voting from morning till night. Demagogues 
would rule the people and pernicious tyrannical laws would be passed. The people 
were inexperienced, short-sighted, capricious, passionate, and the referendum would 
prove the source of great expense and a flood of hasty, injudicious, partisan legislation." 

As to expense, we have seen that taxes are lower than ever before, and the Govern- 
ment more economical. Jobbery and extravagance are unknown, for the people who 
pay hold the strings of the purse, and politics, since there is no money in it now, has 
ceased to be a trade. 



36 DIRECT LEGISLATION. 

Instead of partisan laws, it has been proved that people vote on the merits of the 
measures submitted, the fate of one proposition having no effect on that of another 
put out by the same organization, and partisanship is reduced to its lowest ebb, as 
even Mr. Hart admits. 

Instead of causing a flood of hasty legislation, the referendum has proved a drag 
on the making of laws. In the 20 years from 1874 to 1894 the Swiss Federal Con- 
gress passed 175 laws, 19 of which were called to the polls by a petition for the refer- 
endum. Eight amendments to the constitution were also passed and two more sug- 
gested by the initiative. So that the people voted in 20 years on 29 questions, 10 of 
which were constitutional amendments, which go to the people in our States now. 
Sixteen of the laws and amendments were disapproved by the voters and 13 approved. 
Every one of the questions received remarkably lengthy consideration, and most 
deliberate and dispassionate discussion, the like of which is as yet unknown in Amer- 
ica. Passing less than a law a year is not much of a "flood" of legislation from the 
referendum, is it? Neither does the suggestion of one law in each two years by the 
Federal initiative seem much like a deluge. In 20 years the legislature of Soleure 
passed 66 laws; all went to the people, the referendum being obligatory; 51 were adopted 
at the polls and 15 rejected — less law-making, you see, on the face of the returns, 
than if there had been no referendum. In 20 years the legislature of Berne passed 68 
laws; 50 were approved at the polls and 18 rejected. Berne has half a million people, 
New Jersey a million and a half. Berne, with the referendum, averages two and a half 
laws a year, and New Jersey 450. So that per million of inhabitants 300 laws are 
enacted in the United States to Switzerland's 5, or 60 to 1. It turns out, therefore, 
that the deluge is not with the referendum but without it. The obligatory referen- 
dum makes the entire citizenship a deliberative body in perpetual session. It estab- 
lishes principles and avoids the flood of special legislation that sweeps away all sense 
of virtue from our statute books. The mass of complex, useless and evil laws that 
breeds lawyers, courts, and police, are in Switzerland not passed at all, with a great 
reduction in the cost of litigation and police. 

Mr. McCrackan says: "The referendum is above all things fatal to anything like 
extravagance in the management of public funds; it discerns instantly and kills re- 
morselessly all manner of jobs. " And again: "Nowhere in the world are Government 
places occupied by men so well fitted for the work to be performed. " 

Boyd Winchester says in his ' ' Swiss Republic : " 

"One in visiting the chambers of the assembly is much impressed with the smooth 
and quiet dispatch of business. The members are not seated with reference to their 
political affiliations. There is no filibustering, no vexatious points of order, no drastic 
rules of cloture to ruffle the decorum of the proceedings. Interruptions are few, and 
angry personal bickerings never occur. * * * Leaves to print, or a written speech 
memorized and passionately declaimed are unknown. There are none of those ex- 
traneous and soliciting conditions to invite to 'buncombe' speeches. The debates 
are more in the nature of au informal consultation of business men about common 
interests. They talk and vote, and there is an end to it. This easy, colloquial dis- 
position of affairs by no means implies any slip-shod indifference or superficial method 
of legislation. There is no legislative body where important questions are treated in 
a more fundamental and critical manner. 

"The members of the assembly practically enjoy life tenure. Reelection, alike in 
the whole confederation and in the single canton, is the rule. Death and voluntary 
retirement account for 19 out of the 21 new members at the last general election. 
There are members who have served continuously since the organization of the assem- 
bly, in 1848. To some extent this remarkable retention of members of the assembly 
may be ascribed to the fact that the people feel that they are masters through the 
power of rejecting all measures which are put to a popular vote. 

"The members of the Federal council can be and are continually reelected, not- 
withstanding sharp antagonisms among themselves, and it may be between them and 
a majority in the assembly. They also continue to discharge their administrative 
duties, whether the measures submitted by them are or are not sanctioned by the 
voters. The Swiss distinguish between men and measures. They retain valued 
servants in their employment, even though they reject their advice. * * * 
This sure tenure of service makes those chosen look upon it as the business of 
their lives. Without this permanence, such men as now fill it could not b6 induced 
to do so." 

Read also the following from Sir Francis Adams: 

"The Swiss voter is quite ready to vote again and again for the same candidates. 
He probably looks upon them as good men of business, with long experience of par- 
liamentary and Federal affairs, and he knows very well that if measures are passed 
of which for some reason or other he does not approve, he and his fellows can combine 



DIRECT LEGISLATION. 37 

to reject them at the referendum. * * * There have been hitherto only two 
instances of a member willing to serve not being reelected. * * * 

"The debates are carried on with much decorum. There is seldom a noisy sitting, 
even when the 'most important subjects are discussed. Interruptions are few, and 
scenes such as unhappily have of late been painfully Erequenl in our I louse of Com- 
mons do not exist. The sittings strike the spectator as being those of men of business, 
though the members are by no means devoid of eloquence. 

And this from Karl Burkli, a prominent citizen of Zurich, Switzerland: 

"The smooth working of our Federal, cantonal, and municipal referendum is, as 
a matter of fact, a truth generally acknowledged throughout Switzerland. The ini- 
tiative and referendum are now deeply rooted Ln the hearts of the Swiss people. * * * 
Proportional representation is going ahead in half a dozen Cantons (Berne, Basle, 
Zurich, Lucerne, St. Gall) just now, and six Cantons (Tessin, Neuchatel, Ceneva, 
Zug, Soleure, Fribourg) and the Federal city of Beme have already proportional 
representation. 

"Our city or municipal referendum goes likewise very well. So the town citizens 
of Berne voted this year (April), per referendum, for instituting proportional repre- 
sentation, and last year the town citizens of Zurich (now the largest city in Switzer- 
land, about 130,000 to 150,000 inhabitants) voted for the appropriation and manage- 
ment by the city of the tramways (street-car lines). 

"All these divers votings -Federal, cantonal, municipal— went on without riot, 
Corruption, disturbance, or hindrance whatever, although with great agitation. So 
all is well with us, and you may authoritatively say that there is no agitation for its 
repeal or difficulty in its working, whether in federation or in the Cantons or in the 
cities, as Zurich, Geneva, Bash', Berne, though these cities are full of foreign ele- 
ments. Our Swiss political trinity — initiative, referendum, and proportional repre- 
sentation — is not only good and holy for hardworking Switzerland, but would be even 
better, I think, too, for the grand country in North America." 

Mr. A. A. Brown, speaking of what the Swiss have done with direct legislation says: 
"They have defeated monopolies, improved the method of taxation, reduced the 
rate, avoided national scandals growing out of extravagance; they have husbanded 
the public domain for the benefit of their own citizenship; they have destroyed parti- 
sanship and established a government of the people; they have quieted disturbing 
political elements, disarmed the politician, enthroned the people; by vote of the 
people they have assumed authority over railroads, express companies, telegraphs, 
and telephones, reducing freight rates, express charges and tolls more than 78 per 
cent below the cost for like service under private control." (Arena, vol. 22, p. 98.) 

With such a record how can we fail to favor the referendum ? 
Switzerland has solved her problem by making an intelligent selec- 
tion of the best among many local forms and extending its applica- 
tion. Is there not good reason to believe that we can solve many 
of our problems in the same way ? 

21. Authority of the highest character favors the extension of the 
referendum in America. 

22. The drift of public sentiment sets strongly toward the refer- 
endum. 

23. The trend of events, the progress of civilization, the evolution 
of democracy, and the whole movement of modern history is in the 
direction of more perfect control of the government by the people, 
a path which leads straight to the fuller use of direct legislation. 

24. The fundamental principles of religion and ethics, the law of 
love, the Golden Rule, and the brotherhood of man necessitates the 
referendum. Love and brotherhood deny me the right and banish 
the wish to assume more power than my fellows or deprive them 
of equal participation in the development resulting from decision and 
responsibility. Only unavoidable necessity can justify unequal sov- 
ereignty, and no such necessity exists in cases to which the initiative 
and referendum can be applied. 

25. The final and fundamental political argument for direct legis- 
lation is that it is necessary to true self-government. It and it only 
can and will establish public ownership of the Government. It is the 



38 DIRECT LEGISLATION. 

only way to prove and overcome misrepresentation with due pre- 
cision and promptness. It is the only practicable means of destroy- 
ing the great lawmaking monopoly which holds us in its grip to-day, 
and which is not only a terrible evil in itself but the prolific parent 
and protector of other monopolies and oppressions. 

If the control of affairs is put in the hands of a few men for life, 
without responsibility to the controlled, everybody recognizes the 
fact that the Government is an aristocracy. If the control is put 
in the hands of a few for two or three years without responsibility to 
the controlled during that time, there is an aristocracy as much as 
before. The duration of a government does not fix its character, 
but the nature of the control; and even if time were of the essence of 
the case, -many a monarch's reign has been shorter than the terms of 
our President and Senators. To have a government by the people, 
the legislative agents must be subject to the control of the people every 
moment. If for one instant they cease to be subject to the orders 
of the people, for that instant they cease to be servants and become 
sovereigns in place of the people. 

It is true that in the early history of America pure representative 
government produced good results. It is perfectly possible that in a 
rural community, where the people are nearly on a level, and no 
strong class distinctions exist, representative aristocracy might take 
a course quite close to the one in which self-government would steer 
the ship of state. 

But as the simplicity and homogeneity of primitive society give 
place to the strong contrasts of rich and poor, millionaire and tramp, 
Back Bay and slums, educated and ignorant, nabobs and nobodies — - 
as the people crystalize into classes under the influence of selfish com- 
petition and class interests grow intense, facing each other in bitter 
antagonism — as organizations of men are formed to capture the gov- 
ernment and the offices for their own private benefit — the divergence 
between the people's will and the will of the men who contrive to get 
themselves elected under the name of "representatives" grows larger 
and larger, until in some of our cities and States scarcely a vestige 
of real representation remains, and the Government is a despotism. 

It has come to be perfectly clear that representation does not repre- 
sent, and a little consideration will show that even under the most 
favorable circumstances, delegate law can not be relied on to repre- 
sent the people's will. 

The best of men, the ablest of statesmen, do not really know what 
the people want. The only way is to ask the people. 

It is clear that the people are not truly represented by delegate 
legislation. We have some attempts at representation, together with 
geographical representation and boss representation, and machine 
representation, and corporation, trust, and combine representation. 
Harper's Weekly, discussing "The breakdown of legislatures," says: 

Legislatures, as they were originally conceived, are breaking down because the 
representative character of their members has changed. They have not ceased to 
represent somebody. They are as responsible now as they ever were in the past; 
but they represent a small, organized element of the voters, which is under the con- 
trol of the "machine," and they are responsible to the boss of that machine. 

The question of direct legislation is equivalent to the question, 
"Ought the people's will to govern all the time, or only now and 
then? Shall the ascertainment and execution of the people's will be 



DIRECT LEGISLATION. 39 

made as easy and perfect as possible, or shall it continue imperfect 
and difficult?" 

Senator Marion Butler says that no man can oppose direct Legisla- 
tion "unless he is at heart opposed to popular government." ' 

John Quincy Adams said that "the will of the people is the end of 
all legitimate government on earth." 

SUMMARY STATEMENT. 

Lawmaking by final vote of delegates is not self-goverament, but government by 
an elective aristocracy. 

The remedy is the extension of direct legislation through the initiative and refer- 
endum. 

The initiative is the proposal of a law by a reasonable percentage ef the voters. 

The referendum is the submission of a measure to the people for final approval or 
rejection; obligatory, when all but urgency measures must be submitted; optional, 
when submission may be required by petition of a reasonable percentage of voters; 
legislative, when the option of submission is in the legislature or council; executive, 
when the option is with the mayor or governor, etc. 

Otherwise stated, the initiative is the right of provoking a decision of the sovereign 
people, and the referendum is the right of making such decision. 

Direct legislation is already in full use in town affairs. The referendum is obliga- 
tory in the making of constitutions, and quite generally in certain city matters, and 
it may be used in all city and State affairs at the option of the legislative authorities. 

All that is necessary is to put the option in the people in the case of city and State 
enactments (or make the submission obligatory) and add the initiative. In this way 
the principle of direct legislation will be consistently applied from end to end of the 
scale of legislation. 

The movement for direct legislation (or strictly speaking, the movement for the 
extension of direct legislation) is growing with astonishing vigor and unparalleled 
rapidity. 

REASONS TOR DIRECT LEGISLATION. 

It will establish self-government in place of government by councils and legisla- 
tures; democracy in place of elective aristocracy; government by and for the people 
in place of government by and for the politicians and the corporate interests whose 
instruments they are. 

It and it only can and will destroy the private monopoly of legislative power and 
establish public ownership of the government. The fundamental questions are, 
"Shall the people rule or be ruled? Shall they own the government or be owned by 
it? Shall they control legislation or merely select persons to control it ? " The refer- 
endum answers these questions in favor of the people. 

It will perfect the representative system, correcting the evils of the unguarded 
method of making laws by final vote of a body of delegates beyond the reach of any 
immediate effective control by the people. 

It will give the representatives a keener regard for public opinion, and enable the 
people to pass on then- action before it takes effect. 

It will constitute "a curb to the never-ending audacity of elected persons." 

It will remove the concentration of temptation by diffusing power; it will no longer 
pay to spend much time and money bringing strong pressure to bear on a few legisla- 
tors, because their action will not be final — they can not deliver the goods. 

It will eliminate legislative corruption, kill the lobby, stop blackmailing bills, 
discourage log-rolling, check the passage of private and local acts, and close the door 
to franchise steals and all other sorts of fraudulent legislation. 

It will destroy the power of legislators to legislate for personal ends. 

It will infinitely dilute the power of bribery. 

It will take politics out of the slums and civilize them. 

It will abolish the obstructive power of unscrupulous minorities in legislative bodies. 

It will undermine the power of rings and bosses. 

Under direct legislation a speaker can no longer play the czar to any purpose. 

It will lessen the influence of demagogues. 

i This is bedrock. To deny the initiative and referendum is to deny self-government and democracy; 
to affirm self-government and democracy is to affirm the initiative and referendum. The whole, literature 
of the subject focuses upon that fundamental fact. 



40 DIRECT LEGISLATION". 

It will check the interference of employers in elections and diminish their power to 
control the political action of employees. 

It will diminish partisanship and tend to wipe out party lines in discussion and vot- 
ing. The records we have given of the use of the referendum in the United States 
and elsewhere prove this. 

In its complete form it will enable men to vote their convictions without leaving 
their party or deserting its candidates, and so will diminish the warping power of 
party allegiance. 

It will elevate public questions above mere party considerations. 

It will simplify and purify elections. 

It will work an automatic disfranchisement of the unfit, and bring out a fuller vote 
of the more intelligent and public spirited who now so frequently stay at home because 
they do not feel like indorsing any of the platforms or candidates presented. 

It will simplify and elevate the law. 

It will stop the prolific output of useless, or worse than useless, laws and ordinances, 
and limit legislation to the few enactments really needed. The body politic will no 
longer be disgraced by a fecundity natural only to organisms of a low order. 

In conjunction with municipal home rule in local affairs it will relieve our legisla- 
tors from the pressure of multitudinous private, corporate, and local measures, and 
enable them to give proper attention to matters of real importance; 24,000 bills intro- 
duced in one session of Congress, and in the New York Legislature 1,200 bills, it is 
said, to change the charter of Greater New York, to say nothing of the mass of other 
bills in the same session — think of it. 

It will increase respect for the law and aid its enforcement. 

It will develop the people's interest in public affairs. 

It will compel the people to think and act. 

It will elevate the press and dignify political discussion. 

It will suppress the inducements that tempt ambition to pervert the Government 
to private uses. 

It will elevate the profession of politics, Weakening the motives that lead bad men 
into political life and strengthening the attractions of public affairs for men of high 
character and attainments. 

It will add to the dignity of every citizen. 

It will have a profound educational effect on the people intellectually, emotionally, 
and morally. 

It will favor stability, security, and contentment in many ways, affording a natural 
safety valve for discontent, and preventing its accumulation, bringing responsibility 
home to the people, stopping the schemes of political aggressors, etc. Radical changes 
of policy and delays disastrous to business will become less frequent, because of the 
speedy consideration and settlement of public questions in accordance with the 
popular will. It is a guarantee against disorder. Revolution has little chance where 
the people can easily mold the law. 

It will do more than any other one thing except the growth of sympathy and con- 
science to secure a peaceful solution of the great industrial problems that are threat- 
ening our civilization. 

It will furnish a strong decentralizing, counterbalancing force to save us from the 
centralizing, combining, trust and monopoly tendencies that are hastening us toward 
industrial despotism. 

It will save the cost of innumerable impotent petitions and powerless mass meetings, 
lobby expenses, abortive investigations, excessive printing of special laws, local acts, 
private legislation, etc. The cost of legislative sessions of councils, legislatures, etc., 
could also be reduced; perhaps one chamber of moderate size would be sufficient with 
the referendum. 

It will put honesty in power. 

It will make the right of petition impartial and imperative. 

It will open the door to all other reforms as fast as the people desire them. 

It will no longer be necessary to wait till the millionaires and political bosses are 
ready for the curtain to go up. 

Neither will it be necessary to organize a new party in order to carry a reform. The 
full sentiment in favor of a measure may be expressed at each election and its growth 
recorded more perfectly than is possible by party action. Existing parties would be 
eager to indorse a measure that showed much strength or rapidity of growth, and it 
would be carried long before a new party could rally half the sentiment that might 
exist in its favor. It takes a strong pull to break up party organizations and get men 
away from lifelong affiliations. That difficulty in the path of reform would be removed 
by direct legislation. 

It is the only way to prove and overcome misrepresentation. 



DIRECT LEGISLATION. 41 

It means the enfranchisement of all voters on all questions at all times, in place of 
the disenfranchiseinenl. of nearly all voters at nearly all times on all questions upon 
which they differ from councilmen and Legislators. 

It means that the mighty power of the ballot may be used not merely one day in 
the year, but any day the public good requires— that the great engine of popular 
sovereignty may be made to move whenever the people see lit to turn on th" steam. 

It means that (he people will have constant and effective control of their Govern- 
ment. 

It is the fulfillment of Lincoln's grand promise and prophecy, "a government of the 
people, by the people, and for the people.." 

It is required by the fundamental principles of ethics and religion. The law of 
love and the brotherhood of man can not be satisfied without legislative equality. 
The rule of the few is unchristian — antagonism, not love; mastery, not brotherhood. 

It is immediately and easily practicable. 

It will make the interest of the lawgiver coincide with justice, and identify power 
with the public good. 

It will suppress class legislation. 

It will tend to th" diffusion of wealth by depriving the wealthy of their overweight 
in Government and placing the preponderance of legislative; power in the great- middle 
and producing classes, whose interests are opposed to vast, aggregations of private 
capital. 

Every election i^ a reference to the people, a submission of certian matters to voters 
for decision; what we call "direct legislation'' simply extends the application of the 
principle and improves th" method. Shall we refer things in heaps for a compound 
judgment on each heap, according to the antiquated method of reference or shall we 
ask for a judgment on each item? 

The referendum will separate the judgment on men from the judgment on issues. 

It will disentangle issues and permit each one to be judged on its own individual 
merits, thus ridding us of our conglomerate politics, with its mixture of issues in 
complex, ambiguous platforms, each mixture to be taken only with a spc-iiied can- 
didate or set of candidates. 

It will develop civic patriotism and intelligent participation in public affairs. 

It will make the Government more flexible, more easily adapted to changing condi- 
tions. Constitutions could be changed readily, statutes repealed or vetoed, new 
measures instituted, "deadlocks" deprived of their force, and the law rendered alto- 
gether less rigid than at present. 

It will tend to unite the people. Interests and opinions on specific measures do 
not follow existing lines of division. People will be drawn together across the bound- 
aries of the various organizations. The fibers of political fellowship will run over and 
through party walls. The upper classes will take a deeper interest in the lower 
classes, come into closer sympathy and more permanent contact with them, and take 
a more active part in their political education. 

It is the simple common-sense right of the people. 

One delegate in legislative hall or council chamber can initiate a measure; surely 
a thousand or five thousand or ten thousand citizens ought to have as much right as 
a single delegate elected, perhaps, by themselves. 

It will help the people to understand their own affairs, their city, State, Nation, 
the age in which they live — a matter of the utmost importance, which can not be 
accomplished without the referendum, for the people will never thoroughly under- 
stand public affairs till they are called on to decide them. 

Under the initiative and referendum the people, with the cooperation of councils 
and legislatures, will exercise the legislative power. 

Direct legislation will make it easier to elect good men and to keep them good 
after they are elected . 

It will give the chief power in effective form to the great body of the common 
people, in whom the main hope of the future lies. 

It will give labor its true weight and influence. 

It is the workingmans main issue and is recognized as such by organizations rep- 
resenting millions of the producing classes. 

It is not a class movement, however, but will benefit all classes; even the bosses 
and politicians who oppose it will be lifted by it to a nobler plane of life. 

It is not a party movement; leading members of all parties are working for it. It 
has been demanded in Democratic, Populist, Republican, Prohibition, and Socialist 
platforms, and sometimes every party in the State has advocated it at the same time. 

Those who believe in private ownership of the Government do not like the refer- 
endum, but other people favor it as soon as they understand it. 



42 DIRECT LEGISLATION. 

Many regard it as the primary measure, and few progressive people put it below 
the second place in the list of leading reforms. Antimonopolists say, "Public owner- 
ship and direct legislation"; temperance specialists declare for "Prohibition and the 
referendum"; single taxers write, "The single tax and the referendum," etc. There 
is a story of a group of Greek generals choosing a commander in chief. Each was to 
write down his first choice and his second choice. When the ballots were counted 
it was found that the first-choice votes were scattering, every general having one, 
but the second-choice votes were all for the same man. Each general cast his first 
vote for himself or his pet friend, but when it came to his second choice he exercised 
his unbiased judgment, and then there was no difference of opinion. This consensus 
of second-choice votes had vastly more weight than any of the scattering first-choice 
ballots, and the man each general voted for next to himself or his pet hobby was 
recognized as the proper commander in chief. The application is easy. 

Indirect legislation is not much wiser as a rule than indirect love-making. The 
people get what they want through indirect legislation about as well as Miles Standish 
got what he wanted through representative love-making. 

Direct legislation means control of your servants instead of letting your servants 
control you. 

It is simply a common-sense application of the established principles of agency, 
affording the principal his proper rights of veto, instruction, direction, control, and 
discharge. 

Analogy calls for it on several essential grounds. 

Evolution requires it. Nothing develops manhood like responsibility in large 
affairs; nothing develops society like universal thought and discussion, social judg- 
ment, and concerted action of the whole community. 

Justice and equality demand it. 

It is necessary to good government. 

If Thomas Jefferson was correct in saying that "Governments are republican only 
in proportion as they embody the will of the people and execute it, ' ' and ' ' Government 
is more or less republican in proportion as it has in its composition more or less of this 
ingredient of the direct action of the citizens" — if these opinions of one of the greatest 
of those who formed the National Constitution are to be deemed correct — in other 
words, if Jefferson knew what he was talking about, then the referendum is required 
to fulfill the Federal Constitution, being necessary to carry out the provision which 
guarantees the States a republican form of government. 

High authorities believe it is necessary to the perpetuity of free institutions — the 
only thing that can check the encroachments of monopoly and corruption. 

It is in harmony with American principles. In fact, it is the necessary outcome of 
their logical application. 

It is already a part of the American system of government. All we need is an 
extension of methods now in use. 

Experience in Switzerland, England, France, Canada, Australia, and the United 
States proves the great value of the referendum. 

It has shown itself to be wisely conservative and judiciously progressive, educating, 
elevating, purifying, nonpartisan, and patriotic. 

It makes for peace. Where the people decide, war will be rare. 

Eminent statesmen, jurists, philosophers, and philanthropists advocate it and 
distinguished men and women in every sphere of life favor its adoption. 

No one of high authority opposes it, and rarely anyone objects to it except those 
whose political supremacy, legislative frauds, franchise schemes, or other selfish 
interests would be endangered by it. 

It is the line of least resistance in reform to-day. 

The drift of public sentiment sets strongly toward the extension of direct legislation. 

The whole movement of modern history points to the referendum. 

It is the fulfillment of liberty, equality, and justice for which the American and 
French Revolutions were fought and won. 

Our century is filled from end to end with the growth of the people's power, and the 
evolution of democracy must enevitably lead to direct legislation along the whole line. 

The progress of civilization means the uplift of the common people. Once only the 
sovereign could make a law; all others were his subjects; now the people make some 
laws, influence to some extent the making of the rest, and have in theory the right to 
exercise the whole power of government. At last the theory will be realized and 
the people will be sovereign in fact as well as in name — no laws will be made against 
their sovereign wish, and all laws their sovereign majesty desires will be enacted — 
a state of things impossible except through direct legislation. 



DIRECT LEGISLATION. 43 

OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 

Objections to direct legislation are made by those who do dot 
understand it — those who overestimate the effects of other reforms 
like proportional representation — those who think the referendum 
will interfere with the dignity and usefulness of councils and legisla- 
tures — those whose personal power would be diminished or their 
private interests subjected to the public interest — those who object 
because of natural inclination to take the other side, or chance 
prejudice derived from dislike or opposition to the person bringing 
the matter to their notice or prominently advocating it in their 
neighborhood — those who are conservative by inherited mental 
inertia — those who object to change on the general principle that they 
are pretty comfortable as they are — and those who distrust the 
people and have aristocratic leanings. 

Ignorance, prejudice, self-interest, and doubt of democracy appear 
to be the sources of objection to the initiative and referendum. Given 
a clear understanding of the facts, the nature and workings of the 
referendum and of the unguarded system of lawmaking by final voting 
of the delegates, and the attitude on direct legislation depends on 
the answer the person would give in his heart to the question, "Shall 
the Government belong to the people or to a class?" 

DO NOT UNDERSTAND. 

1. Some persons say, "The referendum will keep the people voting 
all the time, and the cost will be too heavy.'' They seem to imagine 
that the legislature of a. State would go on passing six or eight hundred 
laws a year and the people would have to vote on them ail, and so it 
would cost an enormous amount of money and time. But we have 
seen that the great mess of laws is local and should be left to the 
municipality, and if they were, the number would be small in each 
locality; and that the very existence of the referendum would remove 
the motive and opportunity which produces the greater portion of the 
laws which remain after subtracting the locals, so that the people of 
a city or State would not ordinarily have to vote more than once or 
twice a year, deciding anywhere from one to a dozen questions, per- 
haps, each time. After the change was fully made, this would be the 
case even under the obligatory referendum; and during the transition 
the optional referendum could be used, so that the amount of voting 
done by the people need not be heavy at any time. 

Most of the referendum voting will probably be done at the regular 
elections, without additional expense of any amount. And the cost 
of petitions and whatever special elections may now and then be 
needed will be more than balanced by the great economies resulting 
from purer government and fewer laws. All this is clear in reason, 
as we have seen, and has been proved in the history of Switzerland. 
But even if it were not so, the matter of cost is infinitely insignificant 
in the light of the political and social benefits of direct legislation. 

Finally, it must be remembered that to attain the end desired by 
direct legislation it is by no means necessary that the people should 
vote on every measure passed by councils or legislatures; it is suffi- 
cient if they have the power to do so whenever they wish. The very 
existence of the power of popular revision and veto will obviate to a 



44 DIRECT LEGISLATION. 

large extent the necessity for its use by preventing the pass-age or 
even the introduction of the great mass of corrupt and private bills 
which would have little chance of passing muster at the polls, and 
which if passed by the legislature or council would almost certainly 
be summoned before the people and vetoed by them. An officer does 
not ordinarily have to use his billy or pistol to stop a wrongdoer who 
is in possession of his senses. An employer is not obliged to keep 
su ng or discharging his agents in order to get them to obey his in- 
structions: the knowledge that the principal possesses the power to 
enforce his wishes impels the agents to respect them. So it will be 
with the people's wishes under the referendum. The larger part of 
the most objectionable legislation will not have to be killed; it will 
die of discouragement, and the powers of direct legislation will be 
invoked for the most part only to correct the honest errors of judg- 
ment on the part of legislatures and councils. 

2. Some other persons who do not understand say that "the refer- 
endum is a foreign affair, an un-American idea." The fact is, as we 
have seen, that the referendum has been practiced in America from 
the beginning. But if it were a foreign idea, that would not prove it 
a false one. I never heard that the multiplication table, or the golden 
rule, originated in America. They seem to be foreign ideas, but they 
are pretty good ones just the same. And even the steam engine is 
not indigenous to the soil, although we find it quite useful and entirely 
worthy of adoption. 

3. Sometimes misconception says, "So you think direct legislation 
is a panacea, do you? Well, you are altogether mistaken; it will not 
accomplish what you hope from it." The reply is that we do not 
deem direct legislation a panacea, but merely a very valuable remedy. 
It can not of itself cure all diseases incident to humanity, but it will 
greatly improve the circulation, purify the blood, and give the natural 
recuperative power full opportunity, and these in time may cure the 
body politic completely. We know the referendum is able to accom- 
plish what we hope from it, because it has accomplished it wherever it 
has been given the chance, both in Switzerland and in the United States. 

4. A more specific objector may say, "The referendum can not 
overcome fraud and partisanship, for the power of appointment to 
thousands of lucrative offices will still remain in the hands of poli- 
ticians and representatives." We have not claimed that direct legis- 
lation would, of itself, overcome all fraud and partisanship, but only 
legislative fraud and partisanship; administrative abuses would 
remain until the people adopted a proper civil service, the attain- 
ment of which would be greatly facilitated by the referendum, for 
nine-tenths of the people are strongly in favor of conducting public 
affairs on sound business principles. The referendum, of course, 
would not enable the people to execute the law in person. But abuse 
of administration is much more easily checked than corrupt legisla- 
tion. You can tell what a man does much better than what he thinks. 
To discover the secret motive of a legislator is a far harder task than 
to watch the actions of a mayor or governor. In this important dis- 
tinction lies a most vital political principle, of which the referendum 
is the full expression. The law will have to be administered by 
judges, police, and other agents, whether legislation be direct or indi- 
rect. But once in full use, the referendum will substantially rid the 



DIRECT LEGISLATION. 45 

country of legislative abuses, and give the people an easy path to the 
destroying of administrative abuses, especially if the recall be put in 
vigorous use along with the legislative forms of initiative and refer- 
endum. 

OVERESTIMATE OF SOME OTHER REFORMS. 

5. The second class of objectors tell us that all we need to do is to 
elect better representatives — proportional representation and care 
in the selection of candidates will give us a good government without 
direct legislation. It is true that much may be done along these lines; 
but they are not in themselves sufficient. We have already shown 
that representatives can not really represent their sovereign, even 
with proportional representation and careful selection. Self-govern- 
ment can never be complete without direct legislation. Neither will 
the educating simplifying and purifying effect of the referendum be 
attained with anything like the same ease and rapidity in any other 
way. We believe in the measures proposed by these persons, but the 
referendum is needed also; we are not willing to take a couple of 
spokes in place of a complete wheel. 

DIGNITY OF COUNCILMEN AND LEGISLATORS. 

6. The third class of objectors consist of honest legislators and their 
friends, who think that "the dignity of councils and legislatures 
would depart with the advent of the referendum." We may remark, 
at the first, that if a measure is for the public good, the dignity of a 
legislature has no excuse for standing in the way; it must yield if it 
conflicts with a just and beneficial movement. But in tie second 
place, it is perfectly clear that legislative dignity and honor will not 
suffer, but be exalted by the change. The dignity of a delegate to a 
constitutional convention is greater than that of a member of the 
legislature; yet all of the decisions of the convention are subject to 
approval by the people. The dignity and honor of the legislators in 
Switzerland is greater since the introduction of the referendum, 
because a nobler class of men go into politics. The referendum takes 
nothing from the power of the legislature but the power to keep the 
people from having the laws they want — nothing but the power to 
do wrong. The people will still desire the aid and advice of men of 
legal learning in the framing of their laws. They will revere the 
legislative lights more than they do now, because they will live in a 
purer atmosphere, and be farther removed from suspicion of self- 
interest, and be more likely to be men of high ability and character 
on the average than now. In another way the referendum will help 
the legislature; when a law is passed that the people do not want, or 
a law is not passed that they do want, instead of their having to 
rise and turn out the legislators in order to obtain their will, they can 
leave the legislators quietly in their seats and turn down the law they 
object to, or propose the one they desire. 

The referendum ought to commend itself to honest legislators, 
because it will do more than anything else to lift their profession out 
of the mire and free it from scandal, and because it is in line with the 
duty they owe to their sovereign. 



46 DIRECT LEGISLATION. 

WHAT USE WILL THE LEGISLATURE BE? 

7. Another class of objectors is concerned not so much with the 
dignity of the legislature as with its usefulness. "What is the use of 
councils and legislatures," they ask, "if the people are to make the 
laws?" One would think a person of ordinary common sense would 
not need to ask this question, yet it is asked time and time again by 
members of legislatures before whom the referendum amendment is 
advocated. The referendum leaves summary measures for health, 
peace, and safety in the care of the legislators, as at present, and also 
leaves them full powers in every other direction, subject only to revi- 
sion by the people. The legislature becomes the emergency ruler and 
the universal adviser — the most important advisory body in the Com- 
monwealth. Is that being of no use? You might as well say, "Of 
what use is a constitutional convention if the people are going to vote 
on the provisions it recommends ?" or " Of what use is the architect if 
you are going to determine whether or no the plans he makes shall be 
carried out?" 

These objectors sometimes put their questions thus: "Why not 
accept the work of the representatives as final ?" This whole chapter 
is an answer; two reasons may be restated: First, because representa- 
tives are not rulers but agents, whose plans should always be subject 
to the principal's orders. Second, because those who are called rep- 
resentatives are very often misrepresentatives, and the work they do 
is not in accord with the people's will, as is shown by the frequent 
reverses they meet in their candidacy for reelection, and by the dis- 
approval of a considerable portion of their work when the referendum 
is applied to it. Even when the legislator does his best to represent 
the people he may not succeed, because of the difference in reasonings, 
interests, and prejudices; and even if he succeeds, the fact can not be 
known except through an expression of opinion by the people. 

THE CONSERVATIVES. 

8. The attitude of some, if put into words, would be something like 
this: "I'm pretty comfortable; let things alone." Such a position 
will not be taken, of course, by any man of sympathy and conscience; 
he must be satisfied that other men have comfort, liberty, justice; 
nor by any man of energy and intelligence, for he will not be satisfied 
with present conditions while improvement is possible. 

9. The conservative does not generally put the true psychology of 
the position into words, but finds some specific fault with the move- 
ment. "It is unwise." Read over this chapter, or the summary 
statement, please, and then look me straight in the eye and say "The 
referendum is unwise." If you can do that and give me a reason for 
such opinion other than a mere prejudice or misconception or selfish 
interest, I will do my best to have your name enrolled in the list of 
great discoverers. Some people, when they do not like a thing, but 
have no reason fit for publication, are accustomed to look very 
solemn and say, "It is unwise." 

10. "It is cumbersome," another conservative says. Well, let us 
see. Which is the most cumbersome, to vote on a few simple propo- 
sitions now and then, or to pile up 500 laws a year in State after State; 



DIRECT LEGISLATION. 47 

to sign a few petitions ami register a few decisions, or to bear the 
burdens of corrupt legislation, lobby-made law, bosses, rings, 
machines, party despotism, private monopoly of government? 

11. "It is dangerous to capital," says another. No, not dangerous 
to capital, but dangerous to the unfair acquirement, unjust distribu- 
tion and corrupt use of capital; not dangerous to good wealth, but 
very dangerous to bad wealth, or rather, to the schemes of the own- 
ers of it. 

12. Another who has an aversion to change as a thing that is 
totally opposed to his constitution and by-laws, looks at the refer- 
endum and some of its claims, perhaps, and remarks in a fretful or 
maybe a pugilistic tone, "Things are getting better, why can't you 
let 'em alone V They never would have got any better if they had 
been let alone, and the less they are let alone the faster they'll get 
better. These conservatives talk about the referendum and other 
needed reforms just as the Chinese talk about the introduction of the 
railroad. "The locomotive is a noisy monster. It screeches and 
keeps people awake. The railroad will overturn our methods of 
transportation and destroy the dignity of our carts and palanquins. 
The manners of the trainmen are bad, and traveling in the cars makes 
many people ill. Sometimes persons are killed by passing trains and 
property rights are disturbed by railroads. It is true that they carry 
freight and passengers more quickly and cheaply than our methods 
can, and people would get what they want when they want it more 
nearly than now, but that is nothing compared to the noise and 
trouble of change." It is almost impossible to convince these 
chronic rebels against progress, because it is not a matter of reason 
with them, but of feeling. Logic is a thing they have little acquaint- 
ance with, or congeniality for, if it threatens their ease or impinges 
upon then mental, moral, or physical inertia. 

The final answer to all the conservatives is that direct legislation 
is more conservative than unguarded representation. The people 
would pass some laws that the representatives would not, but they 
would refuse to pass a far larger number that the representatives 
would and do enact, many of them the most dangerous and radical 
private and class enactments. 

In the 10 years from 1874 to 1885, 18 measures passed by the 
Government of Switzerland were sent to the referendum, and 13 of 
the 18 were rejected. Other facts of the same nature will be found 
in the section on "The use of the referendum." 

DISTRUST OF THE PEOPLE. 

13. "Hasty legislation," says one of those who doubt democracy. 
"The people will pass all sorts of laws without sufficient consid- 
eration." For answer, in addition to what has just been said, take 
this from Sir Francis Adams, British minister to Berne, Switzer- 
land: 

The referendum has struck root and expanded wherever it has been introduced, 
and no serious politician of any party would now think of attempting its abolition. 
The conservatives, who violently opposed its introduction, became its earnest sup- 
porters when they found that it undoubtedly acto<i as a drag upon hasty and radical 
lawmaking. 



18 DIRECT LEGISLATION. 

14. Another objector tells us that "The people are not competent 
to make the laws. Many laws are too complicated for the people to 
understand; it takes lawyers to comprehend them." 

Exactly, and that is the kind of laws we want to stop. What right 
has a court or policeman to arrest and punish me for violating a law 
I can't understand, even if I read it and study it? Have I to get a 
lawyer to explain the 13,000 odd statutes to me every year? It 
wouldn't protect me if I did; for the lawyers don't know what the 
laws mean a good deal of the time, and are continually wrangling over 
them; the legislators that have passed them don't know what they 
mean, but have to ask the supreme court; and even the judges have 
a good deal of trouble to find out the meaning, and frequently disagree 
among themselves about it. It's these complicated laws which 
people can't understand that we are going to get rid of (for one thing) 
with the referendum. 

But there is another answer to this objection: Even if some of the 
laws submitted are complicated and the people consent to consider 
them on their merits instead of ordering them back for simplification, 
as they would be apt to do, still we have seen by the records that 
there is an automatic disfranchisement of the unfit in most referendum 
votings, which is the reverse of what takes place in many legislative 
votings on private measures, etc. 

Moreover, it is hard to see why it is any more difficult to vote for a 
complicated measure than for a complicated man — to vote for a man 
under present conditions is to vote for a whole statute book full of 
complicated measures, many of them not yet formulated or even 
dreamed of. 

15. There are people who have no faith in popular government, 
regard it as dangerous to property and likely to result in unjust revo- 
lutionary measures — "government by holding up of hands," "mob 
rule," etc., and would like, with Carlyle, to hear the people cry, "O, 
my superiors! my heroes! come down and rule me as thou seest best! 
compel me to do thy sovereign will" — provided they were recognized 
as among the heroes. 

Carlyle and all his spiritual relations have missed these two great 
truths: First, mankind has discovered that no man can be trusted 
to govern others according to his own sweet will, or even to decide 
what the people's interests are; for prejudice and self-interest and 
narrow knowledge make it impossible for anyone but the people 
themselves to give a correct decision on that point ; even the people 
may not always judge rightly, but if they have reached a reasonable 
degree of development they'll come much nearer to the truth for 
themselves than anyone else can be trusted to come for them. 
Second, the true ideal is not a society in which the masses of the people 
are incapacitated for self-control, but a society in which every citizen 
is capable of self-government; wise enough and good enough to be 
worthy of a voice in the management of the social partnership. We 
do want government by our heroes, but we also want government by 
all for all; and the only way to combine the two is to make all men 
heroes. It was for that, ultimately, that the world dethroned its 
monarchs, and gave the scepter to the mob. After humanity has so 
far developed that democracy does not involve an irretrievable loss of 
progressive power, then the only way to transform the mob into 



DIRECT LEGISLATION. 49 

manhood and make it completely worthy of sovereignty is to nlaco 
the burden upon it and let the responsibility mold it into fitness for 
the work. The people will learn how to govern themselves much 
faster by doing it than by watching the politicians do it, just as a boy 
will learn how to skate or to play the cornet far better by skating 
or playing himself than by Looking at some one else perform. 

The Carlylians fail to note that self-government is nec< ssary, first, 
for liberty and justice; second, for education and manhood. 

The people of the United States are not a mob; they have not on 
the average so much genius as Carlyle, but they have better digestion 
and more common sense. 

16. To pursue this topic a little further, some of these people who 
would reverse the wheels of progress, undo the whole of modern 
history, abolish manhood suffrage, and establish a high property 
qualification or some other sort of recognized aristocracy — some of 
these radical retrogressional objectors to popular sovereignty, the 
sovereignty of the people, say that direct legislation is "a new trick 
to get wisdom out of foolishness." Well, you can get it out of fool- 
ishness sooner than out of corruption. But it w T ill not come out of 
foolishness. The average American citizen is quite equal in sense to 
the average politician; much more progressive, and vastly superior 
in morality. He does not know so much of legal forms as the legis- 
lator, and he won't refuse the guidance of the legislator in that 
respect; but when a law is formulated, he can tell whether it will suit 
him or not a great deal better than the legislator can, even if the 
latter is perfectly honest. 

If the masses of people are a condensation of foolishness, it is 
curious that the greatest legislators all over the Union should spon- 
taneously and unquestioningly have entrusted them with the adop- 
tion and amendment of the fundamental laws of the States, the 
constitutions. And if the people can be trusted with, the settlement 
of the great principles of government, as experience has shown that 
they can be, surely they can be trusted to determine the by-laws. 

Moreover, the people do continually act upon the by-laws, in town 
meetings, city votes, and the election of candidates on party plat- 
forms. It will not be so difficult to vote on each issue separately as 
to decide about three or four platforms, with many issues in each, 
plus the personalities of several candidates. It requires more intelli- 
gence to arrive at a clear judgment on a lengthy platform than on 
propositions submitted singly. Direct legislation will simply enable 
the people actually to accomplish in an easy, inexpensive, and 
scientific way what they are, and in this country always have been 
endeavoring to accomplish in a very rough, expensive, and inef- 
fective way. 

PERSONAL INTEREST. 

17. Another class of objectors consist of politicians, monopolists, 
lobbyists, and others who realize that their selfish interests would be 
injured by the referendum, or in fact, by any improvement in legis- 
lation tending to bring it into closer harmony with the public good. 
The motives of this class are not very fragrant, but it is at bottom the 
most rational of all the classes we are considering, for there is no 

S. Doc. 360. 63-2 4 



50 DIRECT LEGISLATION. 

doubt of the correctness of the idea on which their opposition is 
based. Of course, they do not say much about the real foundation 
of their objection. They do not say, "We are making a good thing 
out of the present system of legislation, and we don't want to let the 
people in; we don't want so many partners on the ground floor." 
Instead of such a frank avowal, they adopt the errors and sophistries 
of preceding classes, and ring the changes on "complicated laws," 
"hasty legislation," "foreign idea," "too expensive," adding, per- 
haps, that the words "initiative and referendum" are pedantic and 
un-American, which may be true, but has no more to do with the 
nature of direct legislation and the advisability of adopting it than a 
man's name has to do with his character and the wisdom of employ- 
ing him to clear out your stable or build your house. 

18. "It is impracticable," I have heard monopolists and politi- 
cians say. Get out your statute books and your histories and see. 
Read Oberholtzer's "Referendum in America" and your authorities 
on constitutional law. You monopolists of government and industry 
know very well that the referendum is practicable, and that you are 
afraid of it. 

19. "Because it works in Switzerland is no sign it will work here." 
Yes, it is some sign that it will work here. The fact that it woiks in 
Swiss cities and Cantons and in the nation is a pretty good sign that 
it will work in our cities and States. But we do not need this sign, 
for we have a better one, viz, that it has worked in our cities and 
States in numerous trials extending through many years, and all we 
ask is a fuller use of what we have abundantly shown our ability to 
use. We have proved that we can swim; untie the rope. As to the 
Nation the problem may not be as clear as we might desire, but the 
referendum in city and State comes first, and that is perfectly clear; 
the rest will be equally clear when we come to it. 

20. "Direct . legislation violates the representative principle." 
This is not true; direct legislation is necessary to the perfection of 
representation. It is lawmaking by final vote of the delegates that 
violates the representative principle by producing' innumerable 
misrepresentations. Speaking of this objection Mr. Moffett says: 

The Teutonic device of representation was such a convenient substitute for the 
unwieldy popular mass meeting that it gradually came to be looked upon as a political 
end in itself, instead of as a convenient means of enabling the electorate to evade the 
limitations of time and space. * * * The representative system is a convenient 
medium for the transmission of political power, ji st as a system of shafts and pulleys 
is a convenient medium for the transmission of mechanical power, and it would be 
precisely as reasonable to object to a plan for gearing a generator directly to the ma- 
chine it was to work as a violation of the shaft-ancl-pulley principle, as to object to a 
practical plan of direct legislation as an infraction of the principle of representation. 

21. "It would reduce the legislature to an advisory body." Not 
quite; it would be advisory as to matters which went to the 
people, and acting agent as to the rest. To make the legislature 
more than an advisory body as to measures on which the people 
wish to express themselves is to give the legislature the power of 
overruling the people and make them sovereign in place of the people. 

22. "The people can't frame the laws for an initiative; they don't 
know enough." There are plenty of experts the people can get to 
do that. The people can tell whether the law is what they want 
when it is framed, and that is the important matter for them. 



DIRECT LEGISLATION. 51 

2:!. "The people don't waul to vote on measures; the vote is 
always smaller than for candidates." Not always, but usually it is 
so, because, as a rule, the less intelligent do not understand the 
referendum and omit to vote. Bui this does not show any lack of de- 
sire for the referendum on the part of the great nuiss of the people. 
On the contrary, the growth of the demand for direct legislation 
exceeds anything in the history of reform. 

24. One of the great standbys of the more intelligent of the oppo- 
nents of popular government was the assertion that "the referendum 
will be unconstitutional because it is not a republican form of govern- 
ment." This assertion is heard no longer. 

The Supreme Court of the United States definitely disposed of this 
contention by its decision in the Oregon case, entitled ''Pacific States 
Telephone & Telegraph Co. v. State of Oregon," decided February 19, 
1912. The case was one involving the constitutionality of certain 
legislation in Oregon enacted through the initiative. The telephone 
company asserted that this legislation was unconstitutional upon the 
ground that the initiative provisions of the constitution of Oregon 
were contrary to the guaranty clause of the Federal Constitution 
which guarantees every State a republican form of government. 
The Supreme Court of the United States refused to entertain juris- 
diction of the case upon the ground that it was a political and not a 
judicial question, and was, therefore, one for the legislative branch of 
the Government to decide. 

Congress has already passed upon this question. Oklahoma was 
admitted as a State into the Union, having the initiative and refer- 
endum provisions in its constitution. The proclamation admitting 
Oklahoma into the States specifically declared that t,lie constitution 
of the State was a republican form of government. 

Several other States having initiative and referendum provisions in 
their constitutions have sent Senators and Representatives to Con- 
gress. These have been seated without any question . 

This seems to dispose effectively of the contention that direct legis- 
lation is not a republican form of government. 

25. Thus all objections utterly fail, and the mighty array of positive 
arguments is left without a breach. To pass the main points in brief 
review: 

The referendum will abolish monopoly in lawmaking, make plutoc- 
racy impossible, establish a real government by the voters, open the 
way to new reforms, bar the path of fraud, rout the lobby, weaken the 
corrupting power of wealth and monopoly, keep the representative 
to his duty, rebuke partisanship, make gerrymandering useless and a 
deadlock impossible, discourage favoritism, extravagance, and legis- 
lative theft, lower taxation, cut down exorbitant salaries, and in 
every way conduce to an economical administration of public affairs, 
decentralize power, simplify elections and the law, stop the killing or 
shelving of bills in committees and the passage or introduction of 
blackmailing acts, save much of the time now wasted in party disputes, 
personal politics, and angry debate, favor stability and careful legis- 
lation, disclose the strength of malcontents and afford a safety valve 
to discontent, elevate the press, educate the people intellectually and 
emotionally, develop their reason, sense, dignity, and patriotism, 



52 DIRECT LEGISLATION. 

make the public welfare hinge directly on the morality and intelli- 
gence of the masses and bring the best men to the front as their 
leaders. 1 

Experience, reason, and the drift of public sentiment combine to 
emphasize the value and importance of the referendum, and after all 
it is simply the putting in practice of the American idea of the sov- 
ereignty of the people. The Federal Constitution begins "We, the 
people, do ordain and establish. " 

i Nomination by direct ballot or petition of the people, instead of nomination by party caucus or con- 
vention, will help to make public spirit and fitness for office the vital elements in the selection of candidates 
instead of particular service and corporate or factional allegiance. The separation of State and municipal 
elections by some weeks or months, and insistance on electing local officers on local issues and not upon 
national issues, will also aid in the due subjection of party. Everything that tends to overcome the rule o 
blind, unthinking partisanship ought to be welcomed by all true-hearted public-spirited citizens. 



APPENDIX. 

TEXT OF CONSTITUTIONAL PROVISIONS PROVIDING FOR INITIA- 
TIVE, REFERENDUM AND RECALL. 

ARIZONA. 

Article IV. 

Section I. (1) The legislative authority of the State shall be vested in a legisla- 
ture, consisting of a senate and a house of representatives, but the peorde reserve the 
power to propose laws and amendments to the constitution and to enact or reject 
such laws and amendments at the polls independently of the legislature, and they 
also reserve for use at their own option the power to approve or reject at the polls 
any act, or item, section, or part of any act of the legislature. 

(2) The first of these reserved powers is the initiative. Under this power 10 per 
cent of the qualified electors shall have the right to propose any measure and 15 per 
cent shall have the right to propose any amendment to the constitution. 

(3) The second of these reserved powers is the referendum. . Under this power 
the legislature, or 5 per cent of the qualified electors, may order the submission to 
the people at the polls of any measure, or item, section, or part of any measure enacted 
by the legislature, except laws immediately necessary for the preservation of the 
public peace, health, or safety, or for the support and maintenance of the depart- 
mepts of the State government and State institutions; but to allow opportunity for 
referendum petitions no act passed by the legislature shall be operative for 90 days 
after the close of the session of the legislature enacting such measure, except such 
as require earlier operation to preserve the public peace, health, or safety, or to pro- 
vide appropriations for the support and maintenance of the departments of the State 
and of State institutions: Provided, That no such emergency measure shall be con- 
sidered passed by the legislature unless it shall state in a separate section why it is 
necessary that it shall become immediately operative and shall be approved by the 
affirmative votes of two-thirds of the members elected to each house of the legisla- 
ture, taken by roll call of ayes and nays, and also approved by the governor; and 
should such measure be vetoed by the governor it shall not become a law unless it 
shall be approved by the votes of three-fourths of the members elected to each house 
of the legislature, taken by roll call of ayes and nays. 

(4) All petitions submitted under the power of the initiative shall be known as 
initiative petitions, and shall be filed with the secretary of state not less than four 
months preceding the date of the election at which the measures so proposed are to 
be voted upon. All petitions submitted under the power of the referendum shall be 
known as referendum petitions, and shall be filed with the secretary of state not more 
than 90 days after the final adjournment of the session of the legislature which shall 
have passed the measure to which the referendum is applied. The filing of a refer- 
endum petition against any item, section, or part of any measure shall not prevent the 
remainder of such measure from becoming operative. 

(5) Any measure or amendment to the constitution proposed under the initiative, 
and any measure to which the referendum is applied, shall be referred to a vote of 
the qualified electors and shall become law when approved by a majority of the 
votes cast thereon and upon proclamation of the governor and not otherwise. 

(6) The veto power of the governor shall not extend to initiative or referendum 
measures approved by a majority of the qualified electors. 

(7) The whole number of votes cast for all candidates for governor at the general 
election last preceding the filing of any initiative or referendum petition on a State 
or county measure shall be the basis on which the number of qualified electors 
required to sign such petition shall be computed. 

(8) The powers of the initiative and the referendum are hereby further reserved 
to the qualified electors of every incorporated city, town, and county as to all local, 
city, town, or county matters on which such incorporated cities, towns, and coun- 
ties are or shall be empowered by general laws to legislate. Such incorporated cities, 

53 



54 DIRECT LEGISLATION. 

towns, and counties may prescribe the manner of exercising said powers within the 
restrictions of general laws. Under the power of the initiative 15 per cent of the 
qualified electors may propose measures on such local, city, town, or county matters, 
and 10 per cent of the electors may propose the referendum on legislation enacted 
within and by such city, town, or county. Until provided by general law said cities 
and towns may prescribe the basis on which said percentages shall be computed. 

(9) Every initiative or referendum petition shall be addressed to the secretary of 
state in the case of petitions for or on State measures, and to the clerk of the board 
of supervisors, city clerk, or corresponding officer in the case of petitions for or on 
county, city, or town measures; and shall contain the declaration of each petitioner, 
for himself, that he is a qualified elector of the State (and in the case of petitions for 
or on city, town, or county measures of the city, town, or county affected), his post- 
office address, the street and number, if any, of his residence, and the date on which 
he signed such petition. Each sheet containing petitioners' signatures shall be 
attached to a full and correct copy of the title arid text of the measure so proposed to 
be initiated or referred to the people, and every sheet of every such petition con- 
taining signatures shall be verified by the affidavit of the person who circulated said 
sheet or petition, setting forth that each of the names on said sheet was signed in the 
presence of the affiant, and that in the belief of the affiant each signer was a quali- 
fied elector of the State, or in the case of a city, town, or county measure, of the city, 
town, or county affected by the meaure so proposed to be initiated or referred to the 
people. 

(10) When any initiative or referendum petition or any measure referred to the 
people by the legislature shall be filed, in accordance with this section, with the sec- 
retary of state, he shall cause to be printed on the official ballot at the next regular 
general election the title and number of said measure, together with the words 
"Yes" and "No" in such manner that the electors may express at the polls their 
approval or disapproval of the measure. 

(11) The text of all measures to be submitted shall be published as proposed amend- 
ments to the constitution are published, and in submitting such measures and pro- 
posed amendments the secretary of state and all other officers shall be guided by the 
general law until legislation shall be especially provided therefor. 

(12) If two or more conflicting measures or amendments to the constitution shall be 
approved by the people at the same election, the measure or amendment receiving 
the greatest number of affirmative votes shall prevail in all particulars as to which 
there is conflict. 

(13) It shall be the duty of the secretary of state, in the presence of the governor 
and the chief justice of the supreme court, to canvass the votes for and against each 
such measure or proposed amendment to the constitution within 30 days after the 
election, and upon the completion of the canvass the governor shall forthwith issue 
a proclamation, giving the whole number of votes cast for and against each measure 
or proposed amendment, and declaring such measures or amendments as are approved 
by a majority of those voting thereon to be law. 

(14) This section shall not be construed to deprive the legislature of the right to 
enact any measure. 

(15) This section of the constitution shall be in all respects self-executing. 

Sec. 2. The legislature shall provide a penalty for any willful violation of any of 
the provisions of the preceding section. 

Adopted by vote of the people February 9, 1911. Arizona was admitted into the 
Union February 14, 1912. 

ARKANSAS. 

Article V. 

Section 1. The legislative powers of this State shall be vested in a general assembly, 
which shall consist of the senate and house of representatives, but the people of each 
municipality, each county, and of the State reserves to themselves power to propose 
laws and amendments to the constitution and to enact or reject the same at the polls 
independent of the legislative assembly, and also reserve power at their own option 
to approve or reject at the polls any act of the legislative assembly. The first power 
reserved by the people is the initiative, and not more than 8 per cent of the legal 
voters shall be required to propose any measure by such petition, and every such pe- 
tition shall include the full text of the measure so proposed. Initiative petitions 
shall be filed with the secretary of state not less than four months before the election 
of which they are to be voted upon. 



DIRECT LEGISLATION. 55 

The second power is a referendum, and it may be ordered (except as to laws neces- 
sary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health, or safety) either by 
the petition signed by 5 per cent of the legal voters or by the legislative assembly as 
other bills are enacted. Referendum petitions shall be filed with ths secretary of 
state not more than 90 days after the final adjournment of the session of the legislative 
assembly which passed the bill on which the referendum is demanded. The veto 
power of the governor shall not extend to measures referred to the people. All elec- 
tions on measures referred to the people of the State shall be had at the biennial regular 
general elections, except when the legislative assembly shall order a special election. 
Any measure referred to the people shall take effect and become a law when it is ap- 
proved by a majority of the votescast thereon and not otherwise. The style of all bills 
shall be, "Be it enacted by the people of the State of Arkansas." This seel ion shall 
not be construed to deprive any member of the legislative assembly of the right to 
introduce any measure. The whole number of votes cast for the office of governor at 
the regular election last preceding the filing of any petition for the initiative or for 
the referendum shall be the basis on which the number of legal votes necessary to 
sign such petition shall be counted. Petitions and orders for the initiative and for 
the referendum shall be filed with the secretary of state, and in submitting the same to 
the people he and all other officers shall be guided by the general laws and the acts 
submitting this amendment until legislation shall be specially provided therefor. 

Adopted September 12, 1910. 

CALIFORNIA. 
Article IV. 

Section 1. The legislative power of this State shall be vested in a senate and 
assembly, which shall be designated "the Legislature of the State of California"; 
but the people reserve to themselves the power to propose laws and amendments to 
the constitution, and to adopt or reject the same, at the pol Is independent of the 
legislature, and also reserve the power, at their own option, to so adopt or reject 
any act, or section, or part of any act passed by the legislature. 

The enacting clause of every law shall be "The people of the State of California do 
enact as follows." 

The first power reserved to the people .diall be known as the initiative. Upon the 
presentation to the secretary of state of a petition certified, as herein provided, to 
nave been signed by qualified electors equal in number to 8 per cent of all the votes 
cast for all candidates for governor at the last preceding general election at which 
a governor was elected proposing a law or amendment to the constitution set forth in 
full in said petition, the secretary of state shall submit the said proposed law or 
amendment to the constitution to the electors at the next succeeding general elec- 
tion occurring subsequent to 90 days after the presentation aforesaid of said petition, 
or at any special election called by the governor, in his discretion, prior to such 
general election. All such initiative petitions shall have printed across the top 
thereof in 12-point (black-face) type the following: "Initiative measure to be sub- 
mitted directly to the electors." 

Upon the presentation to the secretary of state at any time not less than 10 days 
before the commencement of any regular session of the legislature of a petition certi- 
fied, as herein provided, to have been signed by qualified electors of the State equal 
in number to 5 per cent of all the votes cast for all candidates for governor at the last 
preceding general election at which a governor was elected proposing a law set forth 
in full in said petition, the secretary of state shall transmit the same to the legisla- 
ture as soon as it convenes and organizes. The law proposed by such petition shall 
be either enacted or rejected without change or amendment by the legislature within 
40 days from the time it is received by the legislature. If any law proposed by such 
petition shall be enacted by the legislature, it shall be subject to referendum, as 
hereinafter provided. If any law so petitioned for be rejected, or if no action is 
taken upon it by the legislature within said 40 days, the secretary of state shall sub- 
mit it to the people for approval or rejection at the next ensuing general election. 
The legislature may reject any measure so proposed by initiative petition and pro- 
pose a different one on the same subject by a yea-and-nay vote upon separate roll 
call; and in such event both measures shall be submitted by the secretary of state 
to the electors for approval or rejection at the next ensuing general election or at a 
prior special election called by the governor, in his discretion, for such purpose. 
All said initiative petitions last above described shall have printed in 12-point (black- 
face) type the following: "Initiative measure to be presented to the legislature." 



56 DIRECT LEGISLATION. 

The second power reserved to the people shall be known as the referendum. No 
act passed by the legislature shall go into effect until 90 days after the final adjourn- 
ment of the session of the legislature which passed such act, except acts calling elec- 
tions, act providing for tax levies or appropriations for the usual current expenses of 
the State, and urgency measures necessary for the immediate preservation of the 
public peace, health, or safety, passed by a two-thirds vote of all the members elected 
to each house. Whenever it is deemed necessary for the immediate preservation of 
the public peace, health, or safety that a law shall go into immediate effect, a state- 
ment of the facts constituting such necessity shall be set forth in one section of the 
act, which section shall be passed only upon a yea-and-nay vote upon a separate roll 
cali thereon: Provided, however, That no measure creating or abolishing any office or 
changing the salary, term, or duties of any officer, or granting any franchise or special 
privilege, or creating any vested right or interest, shall be construed to be an urgency 
measure. Any law so passed by the legislature and declared to be an urgency measure 
shall go into immediate effect. 

Upon the presentation to the secretary of State within 90 days after the final adjourn- 
ment of the legislature of a petition certified, as herein provided, to have been signed 
by qualified electors equal in number to 5 per cent of all the votes cast for all candi- 
dates for governor at the last preceding general election at which a governor was 
elected, asking that any act or section or part of any act of the legislature, be sub- 
mitted to the electors for their approval or rejection, the secretary of state shall submit 
to the electors for their approval or rejection, such act, or section or part of such act, 
at the nextsucceeding general election occurring at any time subsequent to 30 days 
after the filing of said petition or at any special election which may be called by the 
governor, in his discretion, prior to such regular election, and no such act or section 
or part of such act shall go into effect until and unless approved by a majority of the 
qualified electors voting thereon; but if a referendum petition is filed against any 
section or part of any act, the remainder of such act shall not be delayed from going 
into effect. 

Any act, law, or amendment to the constitution submitted to the people by either 
initiative or referendum petition and approved by a majority of the votes cast thereon, 
at any election, shall take effect five days after the date of the official declaration of 
the vote by the secretary of state. No act, law, or amendment to the constitution, 
initiated or adopted by the people, shall be subject to the veto power of the governor, 
and no act, law, or amendment to the constitution, adopted by the people at the polls 
under the initiative provisions of this section, shall be amended or repealed except 
by a vote of the electors, unless otherwise provided in said initiative measure; but 
acts and laws adopted by the people under the referendum provisions of this section 
may be amended by the legislature at any subsequent session thereof. If any pro- 
vision or provisions of two or more measures, approved by the electors at the same 
election, conflict, the provision or provisions of the measure receiving the highest 
affirmative vote shall prevail. Until otherwise provided by law, all measures sub- 
mitted to a vote of the electors, under the provisions of this section, shall be printed, 
and, together with arguments for and against each such measure by the proponents and 
opponents thereof, shall be mailed to each elector in the same manner as now pro- 
vided by law as to amendments to the constitution proposed by the legislature (and 
the persons to prepare and present such arguments shall, until otherwise provided 
by law, be selected by the presiding officer of the senate"). 

If for any reason any initiative or referendum measure proposed by petition as 
herein provided be not submitted at the election specified in this section, such fail- 
ure shall not prevent its submission at a succeeding general election, and no law or 
amendment to the constitution proposed by the legislature shall be submitted at 
any election unless at the same election there shall be submitted all measures pro- 
posed by petition of the electors, if any be so proposed, as herein provided. 
, Any initiative or referendum petition may be presented in sections, but each 
section shall contain a, full and correct copy of the title and text of the proposed 
measure. Each signer shall add to his signature his place of residence, giving the 
street and number if such exist. His election precinct shall also appear on the paper 
after his name. The number of signatures attached to each section shall be at the 
pleasure of the person soliciting signatures to the same. Any qualified elector of 
the State shall be competent to solicit said signatures (within the county or city and 
county of which he is an elector). Each section of the petition shall bear the name of 
the county or city and county in which it is circulated, and only qualified electors of 
such county or city and county shall be competent to sign such section. Each sec- 
tion shall have attached thereto the affidavit of the person soliciting signatures to 
the same, stating (his own qualifications and) that all the signatures to the attached 
section were made in his presence and that to the best of his knowledge and belief 



DIltEGT LEGISLATION. 57 

each signature to the Bection is the gem ine signature of the person whose name it 
purports to be, and no other affidavit thereto shall be required The affidavit of any 
person soliciting signatures hereunder shall be verified free of charge 1 y any officer 
authorized to administer oaths. Such petitions so verified shall be prima facie evi- 
dence that the signati res thereon are genuine and that the persons signing the same 
are qualified elei tors. Unless and until it be otherwise proven upon official investi- 
gation, it shall be presumed that the petition presented contains the signatures of 
the requisite number of qualified electors. 

Each seeli<m of the petition shall he filed with the clerk or registrar of voters of the 
county or city and county in which if was circulated, but all said sections eirculated 
in any county or city and county shall be filed at the same time. Within 20 days 
after the filing of such petition in his office the said l< rk, or registrar of voters, shall 
determine from the records of registration what n mber of qualified electors have 
signed the same, and if necessary the hoard of supervisors shall allow said clerk or 
registrar additional assistants for the purpose of examining such petition and provide 
for their i ompensation. The said clerk or registrar, upon the completion of such 
examination, shall forthwith attach to said petition, except the signatures thereto 
appended, his certificate, properly dated, snowing the result of said examination, 
and shall forthwith transm.it said petition, together with his said certificate, to the 
secretary of state and also file a ( opy of said certificate in his office. Within 40 days 
from the transmission of the said petition and certificate by the < lerk or registrar to 
the secretary of state, a supplemental petition identical with the original as to the 
body of the petition bu1 i ontaining supplemental names, may he tiled with the clerk 
or registrar of voters, as aforesaid. The clerk or registrar of voters shall, within 10 
days after the tiling of such supplemental petition, make like examination thereof, 
as of the original petition, and upon the completion of such examination shall forth- 
with attach to said petition his certificate, properly dated, showing the result of said 
examination, and shall forthwith transmit a copy of said supplemental petition, 
except the signatures thereto appended, together with his certificate, to the secretary 
of state. 

When the secretary of state shall have received from one or more county clerks or 
registrars of voters a petition certified as herein provided to have been signed by the 
requisite number of qualified electors, he shall forthwith transmit to the county clerk 
or registrar of voters of every county or city and county in the State his certificate 
showing such fact. A petition shall be deemed to be filed with the secretary of state 
upon the date of the receipt by him of a certificate or certificates showing said petition 
to be signed by the requisite number of electors of the Stale. Any county clerk or 
registrar of voters shall, upon receipt of such copy, file the same for record in his 
office. 

The duties herein imposed upon the clerk or registrar of voters shall be performed 
by such registrar of voters in all cases where the office of registrar of voters exists. 

The initiative and referendum powers of the people are hereby further reserved to 
the electors of each county, city and county, city and town of the State, to be exer- 
cised under such procedure as may be provided by law. Until otherwise provided 
by law, the legislative body of any Buch county, city and county, city or town may 
provide for the manner of exercising the initiative and referendum powers herein 
reserved to such counties, cities and counties, cities and towns, but shall not require 
more than 15 per cent of the electors thereof to propose any initiative measure nor 
more than 10 per cent of the electors thereof to order the referendum. Nothing con- 
tained in this section shall be construed as affecting or limiting the present or future 
powers of cities or cities and counties having charters adopted under the provisions 
of section 8 of article 11 of this constitution. 

In the submission to the electors of any measure under this section, all officers shall 
be guided by the general laws of this State, except as is herein otherwise provided. 

This section is self-executing, but legislation may be enacted to facilitate its opera- 
tion, but in no way limiting or restricting either the provisions of this section or the 
powers herein reserved . 

Adopted October 10, 1911. 

COLORADO. 

Article V. 

Section' 1. There shall be submitted to the qualified electors of the State of Colo- 
rado, at the next general election for members of the general assembly, for their 
approval or rejection, the following constitutional amendment, which, when ratified 
by a majority of those voting thereon, shall be valid as part of the constitution. 



58 DIRECT LEGISLATION. 

Sec. 2. That section 1 of Article V of the constitution of the State of Colorado be 
so amended as to read as follows: 

"Section 1. The legislative power of the State shall be vested in the general 
assembly, consisting of a senate and house of representatives, both to be elected by 
the people, but the people reserve to themselves the power to propose laws and 
amendments to the constitution and to enact or reject the same at the polls independ- 
ent of the general assembly, and also reserve power at their own option to approve or 
reject at the polls any act, item, section, or part of any act of the general assembly. 

"The first power hereby reserved by the people is the initiative, and at least 8 per 
cent of the legal voters shall be required to propose any measure by petition, and 
every such petition shall include the full text of the measure so proposed. Initiative 
petitions for State legislation and amendments to the constitution shall be addressed 
to and filed with the secretary of state at least four months before the election at 
which they are to be voted upon . 

"The second power hereby reserved is the referendum, and it may be ordered, 
except as to laws necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health, 
or safety, and appropriations for the support and maintenance of the department of 
state and State institutions, against any act, section, or part of any act of the general 
assembly, either by petition signed by 5 per cent of the legal voters or by the general 
assembly. Referendum petitions shall be addressed to and filed with the secretary 
of state not more than 90 days after the final adjournment of the session of the gen- 
eral assembly that passed the bill on which the referendum is demanded. The filing 
of a referendum petition against any item, section, or part of any act shall not delay 
the remainder of the act from becoming operative. The veto power of the governor 
shall not extend to measures initiated by or referred to the people. All elections on 
measures referred to the people of the State shall be held at the biennial regular gen- 
eral election, and all such measures shall become a law or a part of the constitution 
when approved by a majority of the votes cast thereon, and not otherwise, and shall 
take effect from and after the date of the official declaration of the vote thereon by 
proclamation of the governor, but not later than 30 days after the vote has been can- 
vassed. This section shall not be construed to deprive the general assembly of the 
right to enact any measure. The whole number of votes cast for secretary of state 
at the regular general election last preceding the filing of any petition for the initia- 
tive or referendum shall be the basis on which the number of legal voters necessary 
to sign such petition shall be counted. 

"The secretary of state shall submit all measures initiated by or referred to the 
people for adoption or rejection at the polls, in compliance herewith. The petiton 
shall consist of sheets having such general form printed or written at the top thereof 
as shall be designated or prescribed by the secretary of state; such petitions shall be 
signed by qualified electors, in their own proper person only, to which shall be attached 
the residence address of such person and the date of signing the same. To each of 
such petitions, which may consist of one or more sheets, shall be attached an affidavit 
of some qualified elector, that each signature thereon is the signature of the person 
whose name it purports to be, and that to the best of the knowledge and belief of the 
affiant each of the persons signing said petition was, at -the time of signing, a qualified 
elector. Such petition so verified shall be prima facie evidence that the signatures 
thereon are genuine and true, and that the persons signing the same are qualified 
electors. The text of all measures to be submitted shall be published as constitu- 
tional amendments are published, and in submitting the same and in all matters per- 
taining to the form of all petitions the secretary of state and all other officers shall be 
guided by the general laws and the act submitting this amendment, until legislation 
shall be especially provided therefor. 

"The style of all laws adopted by the people through the initiative shall be, 'Be it 
enacted by the people of the State of Colorado.' 

"The initiative and referendum powers reserved to the people by this section are 
hereby further reserved to the legal voters of every city, town, and municipality as to 
all local, special, and municipal legislation of every character in or for their respective 
municipalities. The manner of exercising said powers shall be prescribed by general 
laws, except that cities, towns, and municipalities may provide for the manner of ex- 
ercising the initiative and referendum powers as to their municipal legislation. Not 
more than 10 per cent of the legal voters may be required to order the referendum, 
nor more than 15 per cent to propose any measure by the initiative in any city, town, 
or municipality. 

"This section of the constitution shall be, in all respects, self-executing." 

Sec. 3. Each elector voting at said election and desirous of voting for or against 
this amendment shall deposit in the ballot box a ticket whereon shall be printed or 
written the words, "For the amendment to section 1 of Article V of the constitution, 



DIRECT LEGISLATION. 59 

providing for the initiative and referendum," and "Against the amendment to section 
I of Article V of the constitution, providing for the initiative and referendum," and 
shall indicate his or her approval or rejection of the proposition by placing a cross (X) 
after one of such sentences. The vote cast for the adoption or rejection of said amend- 
ment shall be canvassed and the result determined in the manner provided by the 
laws of the Slate of Colorado for the canvass of votes for Representative in Congress. 

Sec. 4. In the opinion of the general assembly an emergency exists; therefore, this 
act shall take effect on and after its passage. 

Adopted November 8, 1910. 

MAINE. 

Part 1 of article 4 is hereby amended as follows, namely: 

By striking out all of section I after the word "Maine " in the third line thereof and 
inserting in lieu thereof the following words: "But the people reserve to themselves 

f)bwer to propose and to enact or reject the same at the polls independent of the legis- 
ature, and also reserve power at their own option to approve or reject at the polls any 
act, bill, resolve, or resolution passed by the joint action of both branches of the legis- 
lature, and the style of their laws and acts shall be ' Be it enacted by the people of the 
State of Maine,' " so that said section as amended shall read as follows, namely: 

"The legislative power shall be vested in two distinct branches, a house of repre- 
sentatives and a senate, each to have a negative on the other, and both to be styled 
the Legislature of Maine, but the people reserve to themselves power to propose laws 
and to enact or reject the same at the polls independent of the legislature, and also 
reserve power at their own option to approve or reject at the polls any act, bill, resolve, 
or resolution passed by the joint action of both branches of the legislature, and he style 
of their laws and acts shall be 'Be it enacted by the people of the State of Maine.' '' 

Part 3 of article 4 is hereby amended as follows, namely: 

By inserting in section 1, after the words "biennially and " in the second line thereof, 
the words "with the exceptions hereinafter stated," so that said section shall read as 
amended : 

"The legislature shall convene on the first Wednesday of January, biennially, and, 
with the exceptions hereinafter stated, shall have full power to make and establish all 
reasonable laws and regulations for the defense and benefit of the people of this State 
not repugnant to this constitution nor to that of the United States." 

Part 3 of article 4 is further amended by adding to said article the following sections, 
to be numbered from 16 to 22, inclusive, namely: 

"Sec 16. No act or joint resolution of the legislature, except such orders or resolu- 
tions as pertain solely to facilitating the performance of the business of the legislature, 
of either branch, or of any committee or officer thereof, or appropriate money therefor 
or for the payment of salaries fixed by law, shall take effect until 90 days after the 
recess of the legislature passing it, unless in case of emergency (which with the facts 
constituting the emergency shall be expressed in the preamble of the act) the legis- 
lature shall, by a vote of two-thirds of all the members elected to each house, otherwise 
direct. An emergency bill shall include only such measures as are immediately neces- 
sary for the preservation of the public peace, health, or safety; and shall not include 
(1) an infringement of the right of home rule for municipalities, (2) a franchise or a 
license to a corporation or an individual to extend longer than one year, or (3) provision 
for the sale or purchase or renting for more than five years of real estate. 

"Sec. 17. Upon written petition of not less than 10,000 electors, addressed to the 
governor and filed in the office of the secretary of state within 90 days after the recess 
of the legislature, requesting that one or more acts, bills, resolves, or resolutions, or 
part or parts thereof, passed by the legislature, but not then in effect by reason of the 
provisions of the preceding section, be referred to the people; such acts, bills, resolves, 
or resolutions, or part or parts thereof, as are specified in such petition shall not take 
effect until 30 days after the governor shall have announced by public proclamation 
that the same have been ratified by a majority of the electors voting thereon at a gen- 
eral or special election. As soon as it appears that the effect of any act, bill, resolve, 
or resolution, or part or parts thereof, has been suspended by petition in manner afore- 
said, the governor by public proclamation shall give notice thereof and of the time 
when such measure is to be voted on by the people, which shall be at the next general 
election not less than 60 days after such proclamation, or in case of no general election 
within six months thereafter the governor may, and if so requested in said written peti- 
tion therefor, shall order such measure submitted to the people at a special election 
not less than four nor more than six months after his proclamation thereof. 

"Sec. 18. The electors may propose to the legislature for its consideration any 
bill, resolve, or resolution, including bills to amend or repeal emergency legislation, 



60 DIEECT LEGISLATION. 

but not an amendment of the State constitution, by written petition addressed to 
the legislature or to either branch thereof, and filed in the office of the secretary of state 
or presented to either branch of the legislature at least 30 days before the close of its 
session. Any measure thus proposed by not less than 12,000 electors, unless enacted 
without change by the legislature at the session at which it is presented, shall be 
submitted to the electors, together with any amended form, substitute, or recom- 
mendation of the legislature, and in such manner that the people can choose between 
the competing measures or reject both. When there are competing bills, and neither 
receives a majority of the votes given for or against both, the one receiving the most 
votes shall at the next general election to be held not less than 60 days after the first 
vote thereon, be submitted by itself, if it receives more than one-third of the votes 
given for and against both. If the measure initiated is enacted by the legislature 
without change, it shall not go to a referendum vote unless in pursuance of a demand 
made in accordance with the preceding section. The legislature may order a special 
election on any measure that is subject to a vote of the people. The governor may, 
and if so requested in the written petitions addressed to the legislature shall, by proc : 
lamation, order any measure proposed to the legislature by at least 12,000 electors 
as herein provided, and not enacted by the legislature without change, referred to 
the people at a special election to be held not less than four or more than six months 
after such proclamation, otherwise said measure shall be voted upon at the next gen- 
eral election held not less than 60 days after the recess of the legislature to which 
such measure was proposed. 

"Sec. 19. Any measure referred to the people and approved by a majority of the 
votes given thereon shall, unless a later date is specified in said measure, take effect 
and become a law in 30 days after the governor has made public proclamation of the 
result of the vote on said measure, which he shall do within 10 days after the vote 
thereon has been convassed and determined. The veto power of the governor shall 
not extend to any measure approved by vote of the people, and any measure initiated 
by the people and passed by the legislature without change, if vetoed by the governor, 
and if his veto is sustained by the legislature shall be referred to the people to be 
voted on at the next general election. The legislature may enact measures expressly 
conditioned upon the people's ratification by a referendum vote. 

"Sec. 20. As used in either of the three preceding sections the words 'electors' and 
'people' mean the electors of the State qualified to vote for governor; 'recess of the 
legislature' means the adjournment without day of a session of the legislature; 'gen- 
eral election ' means the November election for choice of presidential electors or the 
September election for choice of governor and other State and county officers; 'meas- 
ure' means an act, bill, resolve, or resolution proposed by the people, or two or more 
such, or part or parts of such, as the case may be; 'written petition' means one or 
more petitions written or printed, or partly written and partly printed with the 
original signatures of the petitioners attached, verified as to the authenticity of the 
signatures by the oath of one of the petitioners certified thereon, and accompanied 
by the certificate of the clerk of the city, town, or plantation in which the petitioners 
reside that their names appear on the voting list of his city, town, or plantation as 
qualified to vote for governor. The petitions shall set forth the full text of the measure 
requested or proposed. The full text of a measure submitted to a vote of the people 
under the provisions of the constitution need not be printed on the official ballots, 
but, until otherwise provided by the legislature, the secretary of state shall prepare 
the ballots in such form as to present the question or questions concisely and 
intelligibly. 

"Sec. 21. The city council of any city may establish the initiative and referendum 
for the electors of such city in regard to its municipal affairs, provided that the ordi- 
nance establishing and providing the method of exercising such initiative and refer- 
endum shall not take effect until ratified by vote of a majority of the electors of said 
city voting thereon at a municipal election: Provided, however, That the legislature 
may at any time provide a uniform method for the exercise of the initiative and 
referendum in municipal affairs. 

"Sec. 22. Until the legislature shall enact further regulations not inconsistent 
with the constitution for applying the people's veto and direct initiative, the election 
officers and other officials shall be governed by the provisions of this constitution and 
of the general law, supplemented by such reasonable action as may be necessary to 
render the preceding sections self-executing." 

Adopted September 14, 1908. 



DIRECT LEGISLATION. 61 

MISSOURI. 

CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT. 

The legislative authority of the State shall be vested in a legislative assembly, con- 
sisting of a senate and house of representatives, but the people reserve to themselves 
power to propose laws and amendments to the constitution, and to enact or reject the 
same at the polls, independent of the legislative assembly, and also reserve power at 
their own option to approve or rejeel at the polls any act' of the legislative assembly. 
The first, power reserved by the people is the initiative, and not more than 8 per cent 
of the legal voters in each of al least, two-thirds of the congressional districts in the 
Slate, shall be required to propose anj measure by such petition, and every such 
petition shall include the full text of the measure so proposed. Initiative petitions 
shall be filed with the secretary of state not, less than four months before the election 
at which they are to he voted upon. The second power is the referendum, and it 
may he ordered (except as to laws necessary for the immediate preservation of the 
public peace, health, or safety, and laws making appropriations for the current 
expenses of the State government, for the maintenance of the State institutions, and 
for the support of public schools) either by the petition signed by 5 per cent of the 
legal voters in each of at least 1 wo-thiids of the congressional districts in the State, or 
by the legislative assembly, as other bills are enacted. Referendum petitions shall 
be filed with the secretary of state not more than 90 days alter the final adjournment 
of the session of the legislative assembly which passed the bill on which the refer- 
endum is demanded. The veto power of the governor shall not extend to measures 
referred to the people. All elections on measures referred to the people of the State 
shall he had at the biei nial regular general elections, except when the legislative 
assembly shall order a special election. Any measure referred to the people shall 
take effect and become the law when it is approved by a majority of the vote[r]s cast 
thereon, and not otherwise. The style of all bills shall be: "Be it enacted by the 
people of the State of Missouri." This section shall not be construed to deprive any 
member of the legislative assembly of the right to introduce any measure. The whole 
number of votes cast for justice of the supreme ccurt at the regular election last pre- 
ceding the filing of any petition for the initiative, or for the referendum, shall be the 
basis on which the number of legal voters necessary to sign such petition shall be 
counted. Petitions and orders for the initiative and for the referendum shall be filed 
with the secretary of state, and in submitting the same to the people he, and all other 
officers, shall be guided by the general laws and the act submitting this amendment, 
until legislation shall be especially provided therefor. 

Adopted November 3, 1908. 

MONTANA. 
Article V. 

Section I. The legislative authority of the State shall he vested in a legislative 
assembly, consisting of a senate and house of representatives; but the people reserve 
to themselves pow T er to propose laws and to enact or reject the same at the polls, 
except as to laws relating to appropriations of money and except as to laws for 
the submission of constitutional amendments and except as to local or special laws, 
as enumerated in Article V, section 26, of this constitution, independent of the leg- 
islative assembly; and also reserve power at their own option to approve or reject at 
the polls any act of the legislative assembly, except as to laws necessary for the imme- 
diate preservation of the public peace, health, or safety, and except as to laws relat- 
ing to appropriations of money, and except as to laws for the submission of consti- 
tutional amendments, and except as to local or special laws, as enumerated in Article 
V, section 2(5, of this constitution. The first power reserved by the people is the 
initiative, and 8 per cent of the legal voters of the State shall be required to propose 
any measure by petition: Provided, That two-fifths of the whole number of the coun- 
ties of the State must each furnish as signers of said petition 8 per cent of the legal 
voters in such county, and every such petition shall include the full text of the 
measure so proposed. Initiative petitions shall he filed with the secretary of state 
not less than four months before the election at which they are to be voted upon. 

The second power is the referendum, and it may be ordered either by petition 
signed by 5 per cent of the legal voters of the State: Provided, That two-fifths of the 
whole number of the counties of the State must each furnish as signers of said peti- 
tion 5 per cent of the legal voters in such county, or by the legislative assembly as 
other bills are enacted. 



G2 DIEECT LEGISLATION. 

Referendum petitions shall be filed with the secretary of state not later than six 
months after the final adjournment of the session of the legislative assembly which 
passed the bill on which the referendum is demanded. The veto power of the gov- 
ernor shall not extend to measures referred to the people by the legislative assembly 
or by initiative referendum petitions. 

All elections on measures referred to the people of the State shall be had at the 
biennial regular general election, except when the legislative assembly, by a major- 
ity vote, shall order a special election. Any measure referred to the people shall 
still be in full force and effect unless such petition be signed by 15 per cent of the 
legal voters of a majority of the whole number of the counties of the State, in which 
case the law shall be inoperative until such time as it shall be passed upon at an 
election and the result has been determined and declared as provided by law. The 
whole number of votes cast for governor at the regular election last preceding the 
filing of any petition for the initiative or referendum shall be the basis on which the 
number of the legal petitions and orders for the initiative and for the referendum 
shall be filed with the secretary of state; and in submitting the same to the people 
he and all other officers shall be guided by the general laws and the act submitting 
this amendment until legislation shall be especially provided therefor. The enacting 
clause of every law originated by the initiative shall be as follows: "Be it enacted 
by the people of Montana." This section shall not be construed to deprive any 
member of the legislative assembly of the right to introduce any measure. 

Sec. 2. That separate official ballots be used at the general election, to be held in 
November, 1906, and shall have printed thereon the words, "For the amendment to 
the constitution providing for direct legislation and reference of laws," and the 
words, "Against the amendment to the constitution providing for direct legislation 
and reference of laws." 

It shall be the duty of the legislative assembly to enact legislation suitable for 
carrying this amendment into effect. 

Sec. 3. All acts or parts of acts in conflict with this act are hereby repealed. 

Sec. 4. This act shall take effect and be in full force from and after its passage 
and approval by the governor. 

Adopted bv the constitutional convention held at Helena, Mont., July 4, A. D. 
1889, and ending August 17, A. D. 1889. 

NEVADA. 

Article XIX. 

Section 1. Whenever 10 per cent or more of the voters of this State, as shown by 
the number of votes cast at the last preceding general election, shall express their wish 
that any law or resolution made by the legislature be submitted to a vote of the peo- 
ple, the officers charged with the duty of announcing and proclaiming elections, and of 
certifying nominations, or questions to be voted on, shall submit the question of the ap- 
proval or disapproval of said law or resolution to be voted on at the next ensuing elec- 
tion wherein a State or congressional officer is to be voted for, or wherein any question 
may be voted on by the electors of the entire State. 

Sec 2. When a majority of the electors voting at a State election shall by "their 
votes signify approval of a law or resolution, such law or resolution shall stand as the 
law of the State and shall not be overruled, annulled, set aside, suspended, or in any 
way made inoperative except by the direct vote of the people. When such majority 
shall so signify disapproval the law or resolution so disapproved shall be void and of no 
effect. 

Adopted November 8, 1904. 

OKLAHOMA. 

Article V. 

Section 1. The legislative authority of the State shall be vested in a legislature, 
consisting of a senate and a house of representatives; but the people reserve to them- 
selves the power to propose laws and amendments to the constitution and to enact 
or reject the same at the polls independent of the legislature, and also reserve power 
at their own option to approve or reject at the polls any act of the legislature. 

Sec. 2. The first power reserved by the people is the initiative, and 8 per cent 
of the legal voters shall have the right to propose any legislative measure, and 15 per 
cent of the legal voters shall have the right to propose amendments to the constitution 



DIRECT LEGISLATION. 

by petition, and every such petition shall include the full text of the measure so pro- 
posed. The second power is the referendum, and it may be ordered (except as to 
laws necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health, or safety), 
either by petition signed by 5 percent of the legal voters or by the legislature as other 
bills are enacted. The ratio and per cent of legal voters hereii before stated shall be 
based upon the total number of votes cast at, the last general election for the State 
office receiving the highest number of votes at such election. 

. :;. Referendum petitions shall be filed with the secretary of state not more than 
90 days after the final adjournment of the session of the legislature which passed the 
bill on which the referendum is demanded. The veto power of the governor shall 
..tend to measures voted on by the people. All elections on measures referred to 
the people of the State shall be had at the next election held throughout the state, 
except when the legislature or the governor shall order a special eled ion for the express 
purpose of making such reference. An\ measure referred to i he people by the inil ia- 
tive shall take effect and be in force when it shall have been approved by a majority 
of the votes cast in such election. Any measure referred lo the people by the refer- 
in shall take effect and be in force when i1 shall ha\ e been approved by a majority 
of the votes casl I hereon and not otherwise. 

The style of all hills shall he: " He it enacted by the people of the Stale of Okla- 
homa." 

Pet it ions and orders for the in it iative and for the referendum shall he hied with the 

secretary of stale and addressed p. the governor of the Stale, who shall submit the 

to the people. The legislature shall make suitable provisions for carrying into 

effect the provisions of this article. 

Sec. 1. The referendum may he demanded by the people against one or more items, 

ons, or parts of any act of the legislature in the same manner in which such power 

may be exercised against a complete act . The filing of a referendum petition against 

one or more items, sections, or parts of an act shall not delay the remainder of srch 

acl from becoming operative. 

SEC. 5. The powers of the initialise and referendum, reserved to the people by this 
constitution for the Slate at large, are hereby further reserved to the legal voters of 
every county and district therein as to all local legislation or action in the administra- 
tion of county and district government in and for their respective counties and dis- 
tricts. 

,The manner of exercising said powers shall he prescribed by general laws, except 
that hoards of county commissioners may provide for the time of exercising the initia- 
tive and referendum powers as to local legislation in their respective counties and 
dislricts. 

The requisite number of petitioners for the invocation of the initiative and refer- 
endum in counties and districts shall bear twice or double the ratio to the whole num- 
ber of legal voters in such county or district as herein provided therefor in the State 
at large. 

Sec 6. Any measure rejected by the people, through the powers of the initiative 
and referendum, can not he again proposed by the initiative within three years there- 
after by less than 25 per cent of the legal voters. 

Sec. 7. The reservation of the powers of t he initiative and referendum in thisarticle 
shall not deprive the legis'ature of the right to repeal any law, propose or pass any 
measure, which may he consistent with the constitution of the Stale and the Consti- 
tution of the United States. 

Sec. S. Laws shall he provided to prevent corruption in making, procuring, and 
s ibmitting initiative and referendum petitions. 

Adopted September 17, 1907. Oklahoma was admitted into the Union November 
16, 10(17. 

OREGON. 

Section 1 of Article IV of the constitution of the State of Oregon shall be, and 
hereby is, amended to read as follows: 

"Section 1. The legislative authority of the State shall be vested in a legislative 
assembly, consisting of a senate and house of representatives, but the people reserve to 
themselves power to propose laws and amendments to the constitution, and to enact 
or reject the same at the polls, independent of the legislative assembly, and also 
reserve p nver at their own option to approve or reject at the polls any act of the legis- 
lative assembly. The first power reserved by the people is the initiative, and not 
more than 8 per cent of the legal voters shall be required to propose any measure by 
such petition, and every such petition shall include the full text of the measure so 
proposed. Initiative petitions shall be filed with the secretary of state not less than 



64 DIEECT LEGISLATION. 

four months before the election at which they are to be voted upon . The second power 
is the referendum, and it may be ordered (except as to laws necessary for the immediate 
preservation of the public peace, health, or safety), either by petition, signed by 5 per 
cent of the legal voters or by the legislative assembly, as other bills are enacted. 
Referendum petitions shall be filed with the secretary of state not more than 90 days 
after the final adjournment of the session of the legislative assembly which passed the 
bill on which the referendum is demanded. The veto power of the governor shall not 
extend to measures referred to the people. All elections on measures referred to the 
people of the State shall be had at the biennial regular general elections, except when 
the legislative assembly shall order a special election. Any measure referred to the 
people shall take effect and become the law when it is approved by a majority of the 
votes cast thereon, and not otherwise. The style of all bills shall be: 'Be it enacted 
by the people of the State of Oregon.' This section shall not be construed to deprive 
any member of the legislative assembly of the right to introduce any measure. The 
whole number of votes cast for justice of the supreme court at the regular election last 
preceding the filing of any petition for the initiative or for the referendum shall be the 
basis on which the number of legal voters necessary to sign such petition shall be 
counted. Petitions and orders for the initiative and for the referendum shall be filed 
with the secretary of state, and in submitting the same to the people he and all other 
officers shall be guided by the general laws and the act submitting this amendment 
until legislation shall be especially provided therefor." 
Adopted, June 2, 1902. 

SOUTH DAKOTA. 

Article III. 

Section 1. The legislative power shall be vested in a legislature which shall con- 
sist of a senate and house of representatives, except that the people expressly re- 
serve to themselves the right to propose measures, which measures the legislature 
shall enact and submit to a vote of the electors of the State, and also the right to 
require that any laws which the legislature may have enacted shall be submitted to 
a vote of the electors of the State before going into effect (except such laws as may be 
necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health, or safety, sup- 
port of State government, and the existing public institutions): Provided, That not 
more than 5 per cent of the qualified electors of the State shall be required to invoke 
either the initiative or the referendum. This section shall not be construed so as 
to deprive the legislature or any member thereof of the right to propose any measure. 
The veto power of the executive shall not be exercised as to measures referred to a 
vote of the people. This section shall apply to municipalities. The enacting clause 
of all laws approved by vote of the electors of the State shall be: "Be it enacted by 
the people of South Dakota." The legislature shall make suitable provisions for 
carrying into effect the provisions of this section. 

Adopted, November 8, 1898. 

UTAH. 

Article VI. 

Section 1. (Power vested in senate, house, and people.) The legislative power of 
the State shall be vested: 

1. In a senate and house of representatives, which shall be designated the Legis- 
lature of the State of Utah. 

2. In the people of the State of Utah as hereinafter stated: 

1 he legal voters, or such fractional part thereof of the State of Utah as may be pro- 
vided by" law, under such conditions and in such manner and within such time as may 
be provided by law, may initiate any desired legislation and cause the same to be 
submitted to a vote of the people for approval or rejection, or may require any law 
passed by the legislature (except those laws passed by a two-thirds vote of the members 
elected to each house of the legislature) to be submitted to the voters of the State 
before such law shall take effect. 

\ he legal voters, or such fractional part thereof as may be provided by law, of any 
legal subdivision of the State, under such conditions and in such manner and within 
such time as may be provided by law, may initiate any desired legislation and cause 
the same to be submitted to a vote of the people of said legal subdivision for approval 
or rejection, or may require any law or ordinance passed by the lawmaking body of 
said legal subdivision to be submitted to the voters thereof before such law or ordi- 
nance shall take effect. 



DIRECT LEGISLATION, 



65 



Sec. 22. i Enacting clause; passage and amendments of law. |. The enacting clause of 
every law shall be, "Be it enacted by the Legislature of the State of Utah." Except 
such laws as may be passed by the vote of the electors as provided in subdivision 2, 
section 1, of this article, and such laws shall begin as follows: "Be it enacted by the 
people of the State of Utah.'' No bill or joint resolution shall be passed, except with 
the assent of the majority of all the members elected to each house of the legislature, 
and after it has been read three times. The vote upon the final passage of all bills 
shall be by yeas and nays; and no law shall be revised or amended by reference to its 
title only; but the act as revised or section as amended shall !>•■ reenacted and pub- 
lished at length 

Adopted, November 6, L900. 

TABLE ANALYZING AMENDMENTS IN FORCE. 



Name of State. 



Arizona 

Arkansas 

California 

Colorado 

Maine 

Missouri (note 5) 

Montana (note 3) 

Nevada (referendum only) 

Oklahoma (note 4) 

Oregon 

South Dakota (note 1) 

Utah (note 2) 



Year 

amend- 
ment was 
adopted. 



1911 
1010 
1910 
1910 

1908 
1908 
1906 
1905 
1907 
1902 
1S98 
1900 



Percentage 

signatures 

for 

initiative. 



Percentage 
signatures 

for 
referendum. 



5 and 8 

8 

i 12,000 



Note 2. 



' 10,000 
5 
5 

10 
5 
5 
5 

Note 2. 



Provision 
for initia- 
tive on con- 
stitutional 
amend- 
ments. 



Yes. 

Yes. 

Yes. 

Yes. 

No. 

Yes. 

No. 

Note. 

Yes. 

Yes. 

No. 

No. 



1 Voters. 



Important defects in the amendments above tabulated may lie added. They explain, in alarge measure, 
why other States have not shown such good results as Oregon. In fact, Oregon is the only State in which 
direct legislation has had a fair trial. The Oregon system is free from so-called "safeguards and restric- 
tions," and the publicity pamphlet is distributed to the voters in an effective manner. 

1. South Dakota. — The initiative practically worthless because an initiated measure can not go to the 
people unless first enacted by the legislature. The legislature has refused to act on several important 
proposals and, since a legislature can not be-mandamused, the South Dakota initiative amounts to nothing 
more than a petition. 

2. Utah. — This State enacted the "principle," leaving all the details to be enacted by law. The legis- 
lature has refused to put it into operation, and so Utah has no initiative and referendum. 

3. Montana. — Fetitions must be signed by 5 or 8 per cent of the electors "in each of two-fifths of the 
counties of the State." This distribution has rendered it too difficult and expensive to operate and no 
petitions have been filed since its adoption. Several attempts have been made. 

4. Oklahoma. — The Oklahoma initiative has the worst of all "jokers," which requires a "majority of all 
votes cast in the election" for a law to be enacted. This means in actual operation a two-thirds majority 
of those voting on a proposition and none have passed which have been submitted at general elections 
since the adoption to the constitution. Oklahoma is the only other State, except Oregon, which has the 
publicity pamphlet, but its distribution has been a roaring farce. It was poorly printed and is sup- 
posed to be sent to the election officials at the primaries precediug the general election. This has not 
been done and not over one-third of the voters have had copies of the proposed laws. 

5. Missouri. — Missouri, like Montana, requires a distribution of petitioners. They must be secured in 
"each of two-thirds of the congressional districts." This has already proven very cumbersome and will 
prove more so in the future. 



S. Doc. 360. 63-2 5 



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